


Fashion Zombies

by Strideshitt



Category: The Aquabats! Super Show!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-29
Updated: 2015-01-29
Packaged: 2018-03-09 12:59:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 20
Words: 54,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3250580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strideshitt/pseuds/Strideshitt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Crash destroys the thingy in the episode, his ship is left behind, and one of the small organisms either inside or on the ship getting away. It infects an animal with a strange disease unlike anything seen on Earth, that spreads from contact with bodily fluids; and more commonly, through a bite.. The infection quickly spreads all over west coast, and despite all efforts to stop it from spreading it soon covers all of the U.S.</p><p>Half the globe is taken over by this 'zombie virus' in less than two months, and unfortunately that's something the Aquabats are just going to have to deal with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I remember the original idea for this fanfic included the 'Fashion' in Fashion Zombies to be crossed out because haha aren't I clever?

When the Aquabats first encountered the Thingy they all knew they were in for an awful trip. Crash had been the first to see it and unfortunately he didn't handle it with the most grace. In fact, his panic about the thing(y) that made the others curious was probably directly responsible for how the Thingy even got inside the battletram. But, the Thingy itself wasn't the real problem here. No, while the thing did cause the Aquabats themselves a little bit of trouble it never really went much further than that. Their mishaps didn't last more than a few hours or so, Crash having defeated it pretty easy once it all came down to it, so the Thingy was just kind of...irrelevant in the events that would unfold afterward.

And, as the world would later find out it turns out the Thingy was not the only organism to come from the outer reaches of space.

After the Thingy had been defeated it's spaceship lay forgotten in the snowy woods where it had first crash landed.

The spaceship that the Thingy had traveled in was a small, pretty close to what someone would imagine a stereotypical UFO saucer to look like, with only a few key changes. Most of the ship itself had been damaged when it crashed to Earth, some parts of it being completely destroyed and others being severed from the ship completely. The area around the spacecraft was scattered with debris, a mess that was only emphasized by the white pure snow surrounding it.

The place where it had crash landed, a small wooded area off of a road already barely traveled, made it so it was almost a week until any humans OR animals even laid eyes on the wreckage. In fact, it took enough time so that when it was seen again it already had a fresh layer of white powder covering it.

Eventually when it was uncovered, just shortly after the seven day mark of being abandoned in the woods, a pack of wild wolves uncovered the UFO while they had been looking for food or some other kind of resource a wolf would need. Unfortunately for the wolves, inside the UFO they discovered lay a dormant parasite that had most likely been waiting for a living host of some kind.

The events that followed the first infection of the wolves are highly debated, no one knowing for sure what happened. Rumors quickly spread, rumors saying how people thought the first human had become infected. One of the most popular theories had something to do with radioactive monkeys or something to that extent, though even if it was the most widely accepted rumor it was still silly as could be.

The real chain of events however went something like this:

The parasite that had gotten into the first wolf worked its way to it's new hosts brain, essentially taking control of the canine. Once the parasite had control, the wolf began to gradually grow more and more sick. The infection itself was something rather akin to rabies, it affected the animals by slowly deteriorating their brains until the animal went from a noble and intelligent hunter into a drooling beast that attacked anything and everything that had a pulse. With each attack that happened the disease spread, further infecting more and more animals until nearly everything in the area had become one of these monsters. A scratch or even just coming in contact with infected blood would spread it to a new host. It quickly became one of the only diseases to pass to each animal with the same effects, and even more horrifying it became the most infectious disease to ever be introduced to the animal kingdom. Unfortunately, the parasite didn't stop there.

While, yes, the forest all the infected had started in was one mostly secluded and out of the way of people that didn't mean no one ended up there it was quite the contrary actually. The road closest to the wooded area was a dangerous one, plagued by deer crossing at every turn and harsh winters that made the street practically impassable. Many a lost traveler would driver over this road only to have their car break down and be stranded there.

With the quickly spreading virus it was no question that this would be a problem; especially since the average human was very close to defenseless when it came to fighting wild animals who had to hunt to survive.

It was only a matter of time until a human being finally caught whatever this disease was, and the first host was a small boy who had decided to wander off into the strange woods by himself. The boy was young, only around eleven or so years old. Perhaps if his parents would have payed attention to him more, this could have been avoided. Then again it would have only prolonged the inevitable.

When the boy who had been bit came home, his mother immediately rushed him to the hospital. Under normal circumstances, that would have most definitely been the right course of action. Unfortunately due to the circumstances of this event that was probably one of the worst ideas anyone could have had.

Upon arriving to the hospital it was a little too late to save the boy (not that he could have been saved to begin with). After only a few minutes of sitting in the crowded waiting room he too succumbed to the horrific effects of this foreign parasite. He immediately turned to his mother and took a huge bite right of the side of her neck.

The gargled screaming of the mom was enough to catch the rest of the people awaiting help, and those that were capable of walking immediately began to flee the area.

The problem with hospitals is, however, if you're in the emergency there's probably a reason for it. This meant that there was quite a number of people not able to save themselves.

The first of which was an elderly couple who had been seated across from the boy and his mother, he pounced on them with animal-like movement and speed. He screeched in-between huge bites of the human flesh, making noises that could only be described as inhuman.

It was obvious that after having her throat ripped out the mother was, without a doubt, dead. The elderly couple who had been attacked were killed as well. The strange part about all this was, even after they were one-hundred percent certified dead, all three of them got up and began to move.

It seemed any and all who were bit were infected and 'turned' into one of those blood thirsty monsters. But it also seemed the more blood you lost the quicker the transformation was. It was strange to say the least, but that's just how it worked. And worked it indeed did, for in almost no time at all the hospital was full of this mindless snarling beats. In no time it spread to the city itself, then to the next. America's west quickly became a wasteland. California, the state it had began in, was full of the creatures in much less than a month.

All events trying to stop the spread were unsuccessful, and no amount of army blockades seemed to be helping anyone. Within two months, half the globe was infected and taken over by the 'zombie' virus.

. . .

Despite the fact they didn't really realize it, the Aquabats were actually a bit responsible for the state of the world. Not on a huge scale, but they were partly responsible. Since they had a run in with the Thingy before any of this had become a problem, it meant they also could have stopped this 'apocalypse' before it ever happened.

Fortunately for them while, yes, their world was kind of in ruins at least the five men were better off than most of the other people living (maybe living wasn't the best word at this point) in the western half of the globe. This was because as it turned out, living in a mobile home was a lot safer than anything else. Though the battletram didn't exactly fit the normal description of a mobile home, that was essentially what it was just...modified.

A mobile home was an advantage because not only were they able to be on the movie constantly without getting tied down to one place, but it was also harder for the infected to enter. It's tough to get into something that's moving fifty miles an hour. At any rate, it was much nicer to have the extra sense of security that came along with a home like this. It never hurt to know you were most likely going to be more than alright so long as you had some gas.

This was probably the reason why the Aquabats were able to survive so long with no causalities. All four of the humans were in tip top shape, and Jimmy was running as good as new. Other than a few probable mental scars and lack of being able to play loud music all the time, it was like nothing changed. They were still broke and people still came banging at the battletrams door every once in a while (the only change being now it was undead monsters instead of tax collectors, though there isn't that much of a difference).

But, of course, there was a problem even with this situation, which was the aforementioned need of gas. In order to keep the vehicle moving they needed gas or else their impenetrable fortress became about as safe as every other house in the area, give or take a little. So it goes without saying that stopping for an extended period of time was not exactly a safe thing to do, making it so running out of fuel was definitely not an option that the group had. Without the ability to move they might as well just jump out into a horde of zombies because they'd be as good as dead anyway.

Fortunately, unlike everyone else that had tried this tactic, the Aquabats had an ace up their sleeve; a robot companion. Jimmy had no problem going out there and retrieving any gas the battletram needed. The 'zombies', as the MC Bat Commander had grown accustomed to calling them, had no interest in something that wasn't alive. They ignored the robot just like they ignored one another, the creatures never caring about something unless it had a pulse.

After things went downhill with the whole 'awful disease that made everyone kill each other with their bare hands and teeth' situation the Aquabats formed some kind of routine. Travel most hours (with no real schedule) until they were too tired to continue, then the humans slept and Jimmy would stay up with the stopped battletram just to make sure nothing bad happened. Honestly since all of this had begun Jimmy charged a lot less and was on a lot more, which was a pretty bad idea all things considered. Though he believed he could let his battery go down a little further than he liked if it meant they'd be able to drive just a bit further, or to make sure his friends would be okay. The robot, though not enjoying this, thought it was better than a fair trade. Jimmy was programmed to help the Aquabats, so he would do anything to protect his human friends.

Another side effect of the end of the world was they couldn't exactly be a band when everyone was a little too dead to listen. They couldn't even practice without alerting a hoard of infected. But, despite all this, everything wasn't THAT bad. Or maybe it was and they were just optimists. Either way...


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little note; this fanfic is full of lots of nice little references to lots of different zombie movies (both new and old) references include quoted lines and actual sections directly referring to entire movies. Think of it as a little game to try and find them all!

"Go fish." The Commander smiled smugly as Eaglebones grumbled to himself and picked a card off the top of the pile.

Card games had become a pretty common thing the Aquabats did to pass time, trying to conserve energy meant they couldn't play any video games which meant they had to find other things to do to pass the time since there wasn't T.V and going outside was a rare occurrence. Other things to do mainly included card games, like now, sleeping, and every once in a while Ricky could convince at least one of the other Aquabats to exercise with him.

Crash scratched his head and made a face as if he was in deep thought. Then, with a facial expression that just screamed he had an epiphany, he looked over to Jimmy with one of the most confident smiles to ever show up his face.

"Hey Jimmy, got any twos?" The robot handed Crash a card, and the large man began to cheer. He wasn't very good at card games as it turned out, and this was actually the first victory he had had the entire round.

"Good job Crash!" Ricky called from the other side of the room, knowing that even the smallest of victories was cause for celebration when it came to Crash and 'Go Fish'. Despite the world going to hell, the runner was still a firm believer in clean clothes, and was his rashguard as often as possible. Usually he just did it with a rag, because dry cleaning wasn't a thing easy to come by in the apocalypse.

"Hey Crash- got a four?" The Commander cut in on the large man's victory cheer, eager to begin his turn and perhaps have his own victory.

"Sorry Commander." Crash couldn't stop his smile from growing larger. "Go fish."

The Commander groaned and tossed his cards on the table with a frown. "I don't want to play go fish anymore." He leaned back with his arms crossed defiantly over his chest, adding a sense of finality to his words.

Ricky snorted. "Don't be a sore loser!" He called out with a grin on his face, showing off his teeth and by extension his metallic braces. The singer glared over at him and all the other Aquabats began to laugh.

"Yeah." Eaglebones nodded and laid his cards on the table as well, then stretched. "I'm actually done too."

Crash, who had hoped he actually had a chance at winning that round, frowned. "Aw man..."

"It's okay Crash." Ricky walked over to the group and laid his hand on Crash's chair just beside the larger man's shoulder. "Everyone probably quit because they knew they couldn't stand a chance against you."

"Its getting late anyway." The Commander said as he stood up, trying to play off his quitting as cool as possible. "We all might as well be going to bed anyway."

"I can read you all a story." Jimmy offered, always eager to do something for his friends.

Crash's frown grew, and all the others shuddered at the memory of the last time Jimmy had decided to read them a 'bed time' story.

"Uh, no thanks robot."

"I still don't feel right after that floating eye of death incident..." Ricky mumbled quietly under his breath.

Jimmy said nothing more about that and just nodded to his friends. "Alright, goodnight everyone."

The room was filled with more good-nights to the robot before the four off them wandered off to their beds, leaving Jimmy behind.

The robot frowned, sitting in one of the plastic chairs surrounding the table. His battery was getting rather low, but he was sure his power would last through the night. Plus, he wasn't sure he could even manage to plug himself into the recharge station when worried about what could and (probably) would happen if he left his friends sleeping and defenseless. They had never actually had an incident before, and he could honestly say he didn't plan on having that change anytime soon. The robot didn't want to take any chances if they weren't necessary, his battery could just wait.

Once all the Aquabats had woken up, starting with Ricky as usually and ending with the Commander, Jimmy wished them all a good morning and made his way to his lab. He didn't like not spending time with his friends, but it was his only option. He missed sleeping when they did, but knowing they were safe was more important to him than anything else.

. . .

"Jimmy- come on- if we all go out at once it'll be fine!" The Commander tried to reason with the robot.

"No. It won't be safer. Commander, you know the more people there is the easier it is to attract them. I'm going to get the supplies we need alone."

This is how it went every time Jimmy went out. The Aquabats tried to get the robot to agree to let them tag along, and nearly every time their begging and pleas fell onto deaf ears and they were forced to stay in the battletram as the robot did whatever the task was that he had set out to do. They all tried to get Jimmy to let them tag along, and every time they were all ignored.

"Aw, Jimmy come on!" Ricky tried. "We're going crazy in here!"

"Yeah, robot you don't understand! It's like torture." MCBC continued.

"Please Jimmy." Crash pleaded as well.

"Nothing bad will happen." Eaglebones pipped up as well, finally pitching into the conversation.

The robot rubbed his temples. It was times like this that he honestly wouldn't mind being in his recharge station or something else that would save him from these conversations without giving them what they wanted. They basically all acted like very small children.

"Please- you know why that's not a good idea."

"We have weapons." Eaglebones responded.

"Besides," Ricky held up a finger. "if things get bad I can distract them and lead them away from everyone! Those things are pretty slow."

Jimmy's frown grew. "That's an even worse idea."

Ricky shrugged. "But it'd work."

"Debatable."

"Come on Jimmy!" Crash begged, trying to give the robot his best puppy-dog face.

"That's not gonna work..." Eaglebones whispered over to the Commander who just nodded in agreement. Jimmy was a tough cookie to break, so there was no way that he'd agree just because Crash made a face at him-

"Just this time, okay? And only after I make sure there's not too many infected out there..." The robot looked nervous.

"Yeah Jimmy!" Ricky cheered, hopping up and down with a raised fist.

Eaglebones and the Commander exchanged baffled looks, but didn't mention it. Crash practically crushed the robot in a bear hug, swaying Jimmy back and forth in a rocking movement as he repeated 'thank you' over and over again like it was some kind of excited and happy mantra.

The robot peeled the large man off him and made his way to the door. "Wait here, alright? I'll be back and tell you if it's safe enough."

"Of course it'll be safe!" The Commander smiled his goofy, heroic smile, and pointed. "We're the Aquabats!"

Jimmy rolled his eyes and left the room without bothering to dignify the Commander's silliness with a real response.

Despite how Jimmy told them to wait in that room, all the Aquabats cheered and ran off to grab their 'weapons'. They weren't used often, but they kept them around just in case they ever did need them or in the rare case that Jimmy let them come with him.

The battletram lurched slightly as Jimmy brought it to a stop on the side of the road. Even if there was no real reason to pull over, the robot did it slightly out of habit and slightly for a sense of normality. There was something comforting about still abiding by old laws, even if now they were a bit useless and trivial.

Jimmy looked through the windshield and glanced around the surrounding area to check for any infected. He breathed a sigh of relief when he noticed only a handful. He knew that now he had agreed to let the others tag along there would have been no way to get them to stay in even if there had been hundreds of zombies, so it was nice to see the threat level was pretty low and they'd be moderately safe.

Jimmy paused for a moment, just trying to prepare himself for what was ahead. Nothing BAD had happened to them so far, and a large portion of him knew the other Aquabats could handle anything that got tossed their way, but something about the whole situation was still very stressful for him. Maybe its because one wrong move could mean game over for his friends, and they were all reckless enough to have that be a very possible reality.

Deciding he was as ready as he could ever be, he left the cockpit and made his way back into the room he had left his friends in. Jimmy couldn't really say he was surprised when he saw they had left the room, he was honestly expecting as much. In fact, he would have been more surprised if they had done what he said. He sighed and left the room, heading towards the battletram's exit. If he knew anything about his friends, then they'd probably already be waiting for him there.

Sure enough, there, right by the door, stood the other four Aquabats. Crash donned a football helmet and shoulder pads. His hands were in a pair of oven mitts, and he was holding a golf club as well. All the others wore nothing extra, much to Jimmy's uneasiness. The robot would have very much preferred they all cover as much skin as possible, just because he worried about them so much.

"You ready?" The Commander greeted Jimmy.

The singer stood in a dramatic fashion, holding a small fancy gun in his left hand. Next to him stood Ricky, in his normal faux-superhero pose with one hand on his him and the other holding a crowbar resting on his shoulder. The runner's goggles were pushed up onto his helmet and away from his eyes, a fashion he had grown accustomed to in the last month.

Eaglebones stood on the other side of a very fidgety Crash. His long wavy hair was tied up into a ponytail. Eaglebones still preferred to stay a bit away from the action of battle thanks to his frail bones, so in his hands was his same old laser powered guitar he had always used.

Jimmy nodded, ready to go. Well, maybe ready wasn't exactly the right word to use in this case. He was nervous as hell for his friends, even if they seemed more than just ecstatic. It was dangerous out there- even now. Anything could happen and he was not prepared for anything negative.

The Commander grinned even larger. "Aquabats!" His hand went to the doors button, and everyone seemed to change stances to something like the pose a racer would take right before the race started. "Let's go!"

As the door slid open, enthusiasm grew for everyone. Even Jimmy couldn't help but feel the bubbly energy radiate into him, even when they noticed that there were, indeed, infected out there.

Being quiet was a necessity in this world, being too noisy alerted the heightened senses of the 'zombies'. Even though the men wanted to cheer and shout like idiots, they all just smiled giddily at one another like kids at a candy shop.

"Alright." Jimmy said in a hushed tone of voice. "Let's go." The robot stepped out of the battletram and into the mid-day sun. The harsh light reflected off Jimmy's metal helmet, only increasing the brightness by ten fold.

"Jeez robot..." The Commander was shielding his eyes from the brightness, and let out a whistle. "Why does your head have to be so shiny?"

The light was pretty intense for the four human men, even though the battletram had lights and windows that wasn't enough to prepare them for their first time outside in quite a while. This whole situation was turning uncomfortable and painful incredibly quick.

Ricky grinned once his eyes adjusted, and took in a deep breath with his arms raised high. He stretched with the crowbar in hand, looking pretty awkward. It was kind of humorous to see it, it was like one of his arms was much longer than the other.

"It's nice to finally have some fresh air again." Ricky had a huge open smile on his face, showing off his braces that shined in the sun.

Jimmy seemed to be the only one without this abundant enthusiasm and a large grin. Instead he was looking around nervously. The robot wasn't usually the type to fret so much, but out here he had no control over what happened and he felt incredibly powerless. After all, the death of nearly every human wasn't exactly the most stress free thing that could happen.

"So." Crash tilted his head a little, looking over at their robot companion. "Where exactly are we going?"

"Good question Crash!" The Commander said with enough enthusiasm for them all.

Jimmy looked between the two men with a frown. "Well.." He paused. That WAS a good question. Now that he thought about it, he had really only wanted to stop because there was a stalled car nearby; and he was hopeful it might have some useful things in it. "I just wanted to see if there was anything we needed in the car around a mile from where we are now."

"How boring." The Commander moaned and then tsked like this was suddenly a grueling task that he hadn't wanted any part of.

"At least we got to leave the battletram." Eaglebones was quick to mention, hoping that would stop the Commander from whining anymore.

"Yeah, I was going crazy in there." Crash agreed.

To be honest, because the task was pretty boring was really the only reason Jimmy had agreed to let the others tag along. Jimmy didn't WANT to keep his friends trapped inside all the time, he was just very worried for their safety like he was some mother hen type figure of the group. Which, in a way, he really was.

"We should move." Jimmy finally said, more than just ready to get through with this trip.

"Yeah, okay."

Luckily for them, most of the zombies were quite a ways away, making it pretty safe for them until they got too close or too loud.

Unfortunately, even though they seemed to have no problem with the infected, the Aquabats were still pretty slow to reach their destination, probably because the Commander was so slow and wouldn't stop complaining about every little thing like how much walking they did, and how boring going to a car was.

"I think it's nice." Ricky cut in during the middle of the singer's complaints. "Besides, all of you could use more exercise anyway." He playfully poked Crash in the side, earning a weird noise from the larger man. "You're all getting preeeetty flabby."

"Yeah, sure." Eaglebones snorted.

"Maybe not you." Ricky quickly added.

"I dunno if you noticed, but it's kind of the end of the world." The Commander reminded him. "Who am I supposed to impress?"

Ricky shrugged. "Hey, you never know. Maybe there's some pretty girl somewhere looking to repopulate if you catch my drift." Jimmy elbowed the teenager in the side with a roll of his eyes.

"You're kinda young for that, aren't you?" Eaglebones teased with a grin. Everyone began laughing as Ricky shot the long haired boy a mildly dirty look.

"At least I'm hot." Ricky snickered at the older boy.

"Maybe one day." The Commander teased.

"Oh hey come on-" Ricky pretended to be offended.

"I'm on your side Ricky." Crash said with a smile at the younger Aquabat.

Ricky grinned looking back over at Eaglebones and the Commander, linking his arm with the larger man's.

Eaglebones made a face at the teen. "Okay, we're even then."

"No, I think my vote counts twice as much as everyone else's." The Commander grinned mischievously.

"That's not fair!"

"I AM the leader."

"Than Crash's and I's votes should count even more!"

"Why?" Eaglebones scrunched up his nose.

"Because we have powers!"

"That's not fair!" The Commander replied with a whine, sticking his nose up in the air indignantly.

"Hey, Jimmy," The long haired man turned his attention over to the robot. "What do you think?"

Jimmy seemed a little conflicted by the had been perfectly more than content NOT getting involved in the childish argument, so he wasn't entirely sure how to respond now that he had been dragged into it much against his will.

"Yes." He finally answered.

Everyone gave him a confused and befuddled expression, but didn't bother to ask what that was supposed to mean. In fact, after that the whole thing was just kind of...dropped. Maybe that had been because of Jimmy's weird answer, or maybe it was because they had finally reached their destination.

It was a pretty standard looking blue pickup truck, and it was still running too. Jimmy opened the driver's side door and scrunched his nose up in disgust when he saw the body still sitting in the seat, holding onto the steering wheel with stiff hands.

"Oh." The others groaned when they got a look of it as well.

The robot frowned, reaching into the cab and turning the key to put the truck in the 'off' position.

All of the Aquabats moved to the back door and the bed of the truck, looking for anything to make their trip worthwhile.

"Hey guys! Look what I found!" Ricky called to the others while he was halfway inside the back seat of the truck.

They all collected around the door with curiosity, and Ricky pulled out with a grin on his face and a shotgun in his hand.

"Is it loaded?" Crash asked with genuine interest.

"I- uh- I dunno." The youngest Aquabat frowned, turning the gun over in his hands and looking at it. He cocked his head to the side, and looked back on the seat of the truck. "There's some bullets here-"

"Shells."

"What?"

"Shot gun shells. Not bullets."

"Oh. Uh." Ricky looked back down at the gun in his hands, and then to the case of shells in the truck. "Well, there's shells here. A box full of them." He moved the gun to one hand then reached out his free hand into the truck's cab. He pulled out the box of rounds, and handed them to the Commander.

"Can I have it?" Crash asked, looking over the Commander's shoulder at the gun.

"I don't think that's a good idea-" The robot began.

"Quiet Jimmy."

MCBC took the gun from Ricky, and handed it over to their larger companion.

"Thanks." Crash grinned as he looked over the gun in awe. He continued to turn it over and over in his hands. This thing was much better than the gold club he had been using as a weapon. Crash didn't even like golf! Besides, his aim with the club had been kind of...off anyway.

"Is there anything else in there?" Jimmy asked the runner with a raised eyebrow and a slight crane of the neck.

"Let me check..." Ricky said before climbing back inside rather awkwardly. The other bats weren't able to really see what was going on due to the way he had climbed inside, though the sounds of rummaging weren't the most interesting and curiosity peaking things in the world.

"Find anything?"

"Not yet-" Ricky called from the seat. "Wait!" He grunted as he began to slid out, holding something shiny across his palms. "It's a sword!"

"I call it!" Eaglebones quickly shouted startling everyone, seemingly before anyone else had even processed the statement. Everyone looked over at the man. "Just in case." He shrugged.

"I think that's it..." Ricky mumbled after handing Eaglebones his sword, looking back into the truck with a sideways glance but not actually bothering to climb back in.

Eaglebones gently moved the sword in his hands, looking over it like a interested child.

"Is there anything else in the back I wonder?" Jimmy asked himself, trailing off to the bed of the truck. If the owner of the vehicle had been alive up until recently, that could be either a very good sign for supplies or a very bad one. It all kind of depended on just how it was he had died.

In the bed of the truck was a tire, some empty gas cans, a cooler, and other uninteresting miscellaneous items like a flashlight and wood. Jimmy quickly grabbed the cans, knowing how badly they actually needed them. They only had one currently, just enough to get some gas in the Battletram once per trip. Sometimes that wasn't even enough to fill it up! With these, he could finally make less gas stops. There was four of them there, and he eagerly grabbed them all. It was a bit inconvenient and awkward to carry, but he was sure he could manage it. It was pretty necessary for them after all.

"Crash!" Jimmy called the largest Aquabat over to help him now that his hands were sufficiently full. In a few seconds, the man was already at his side.

"Yeah, Jimmy?" Crash looked to the back of the truck curiously. "Do you need me to grab something?" He asked noticing the robot's hands were full.

"Yes, please." He gestured in with a hand wave, causing the plastic of the cans to bang against one another and make a rather unpleasant noise. "Can you grab the cooler? I want to see if there's anything in it."

"Oh yeah, no problem Jimmy!" Crash beamed.

Crash did as he was asked, reaching over the side of the truck's bed and lifting out the cooler with a grunt.

"It's kinda heavy-" He dropped it to the ground with a thud. "I think it's full!"

Wondering what the noise was, soon the other three Aquabats gathered around the red and white cooler with interest.

"I hope it's cake..." The Commander said, mouth watering at the thought of a moist delicious dessert treat.

"Or meat."

"Fresh vegetables maybe?"

"I just hope whatever it is isn't spoiled..." Jimmy said more to himself than to the others. He honestly just didn't care what was in the cooler, as long as it was still edible for his friends.

The Commander bent down, wiggling his fingers dramatically with a large smile before he grabbed the lid off the cooler and threw it aside.

Inside the cooler was over a dozen shining tin cans. The Commander pulled one out with a befuddled expression. He rolled it around in his hand, scrutinizing it with a scrunched up nose as he tried to figure out just what it was.

"There's no label." He pointed out, handing it to Jimmy who had placed the plastic containers he'd been holding on the ground.

As curious and confused as the others, the robot used a laser finger to open the can and inspect its contents.

"What is it?" The others asked in almost unison, all trying to get a look inside the metal can.

"I..." Jimmy rotated the ca, watching whatever the 'food' was inside turn with each movement of his wrist. "I don't know."

"Can I see?" Crash asked, holding out a hand and hoping to see for himself what the mystery contents were.

Jimmy obliged, handing over the mystery item to the bass player. Everyone flocked closer to Crash hoping to get their own look.

"Ew," Ricky recoiled in disgust when he got a glance, and a whiff, of the brown sludge. "what IS that?"

"I don't know." Eaglebones turned away from it, also grossed out. "But there's no way I'm gonna eat it."

"It smells nasty."

"Is it all like that?"

"Is this even food?"

Jimmy crouched down, trying to avoid the noises of his friends as he picked up a second can. Just like the first, it had no label. It's side was dented, and it had a rusted top. Jimmy frowned and set it back in the cooler, pulling out the next can in the row. By the time he had reached can number five, he was severely discouraged. It seemed they had only found a cooler with nothing even remotely useful inside. Well, on the bright side, maybe they could keep the cooler itself to carry things. He dumped the cans on the ground, keeping a frown on his face the entire time.

The Commander took the opened can from Crash, squinting and looking at the stuff inside with pure disgust. He stuck his pinkie into the strange sludge, and inspected the grimy and overall unpleasant substance while squinting and grimacing at the feel of it. Then, slowly, he brought his pinkie to his mouth and licked it off.

"EW, GROSS!" Came the response from all the other Aquabats, who had been shuddering just at the sight of it.

The Commander made a disgusted face, recoiling in regret.

Jimmy quickly stepped forward, worried that maybe the Commander was about to be sick.

"It's..." MCBC wiped his finger on his shorts, making a clicking noise repeatedly with his tongue, trying to get the taste of the canned food out of his mouth. "I think it's dog food."

Eaglebones snorted and the others began to laugh at the Commander's reaction to getting a taste of, possibly expired, pet food.

"Then we definitely don't need it." Jimmy muttered, looking down at the cans on the ground.

"Did he have a dog then?" Crash asked, looking back towards the inside of the truck.

"Maybe he didn't know what it was either."

"Yeah, and I didn't see a can opener or anything when I was looking. Maybe he thought it was food too!" Ricky said. "He could have been waiting to open it before he..." He trailed off, looking pretty uncomfortable.

Death was something they'd seen a lot of as of late, and it didn't get any easier to think about when it was something so...real. Death had always been an unquestioned part of life, and it always seemed to be looming over head and causing some fear, but now, in what could only be described as an apocalypse, death was no longer a strange far off concept. Now it was everywhere, and it was always close by. Even people as happy and almost naive as the Aquabats knew that.

"Who knows." The Commander kicked one of the cans with a frown. "Let's get out of here. There's probably nothing left." The others nodded in agreement.

"Hold on!" Eaglebones called out as everyone began walking straight away from the vehicle with no second thoughts. "I want to check the front, there could be something in the glove box."

"Good thinking Eaglebones."

The guitarist jogged up to the front of the cab, opening up the passenger side door and then pausing in complete horror.

"Hey-" All the Aquabats turned to face Eaglebones with varying degrees of interest. "wheres the dead guy?"


	3. Chapter 3

A lot of things can happen in only a few seconds. For example, taking your eyes off the road for only five seconds when driving can lead to an accident. Only five seconds, that's not even enough time to really react to anything big, like a car wreck for example. Or being attacked by a zombie.

Unfortunately for the Aquabats' long haired guitarist, he had even less than five seconds to react to what happened to him.

A hand shot out from beneath the truck, grabbing the guitar player's ankle in a strong grip. Eaglebones let out a loud screech when he realized what was going on. Everyone quickly sprang into action, except for just one of them.

Eaglebones had fallen to the ground almost immediately, but was kicking the zombie that had a hold of him. Over and over he brought his free foot into the face of the monster, making scared babbling noises with each hit and movement.

And then, as fast as it had started, it was over. One well aim kick managed to crush the infected's already weakened skull, causing it to collapse in on itself and release its grip on Eaglebones' ankle.

"Are you alright?" Jimmy was looking over the long haired man's body as frantic as a mother whose child had fallen down. "Did you get hurt?"

Eaglebones gently shook off Jimmy's hands, kind of embarrassed at how much noise he had made (even if it was appropriate in the given situation). "I'm fine." He turned his attention to Ricky, who had been as still as a statue the entire time. "Feel free to step in whenever..."Eaglebones muttered as he took Crash's hand and pulled himself to his feet. He dusted himself off, and everyone turned their attention to Ricky as well.

"I..." The runner mumbled, looking down and away from everyone's eyes. He hated being the center of attention, even more so the center of negative attention.

"It's fine." Eaglebones said entirely dismissively.

Jimmy could sense the tension, and stepped forward. "We should get out of here. Who knows if there was any infected in the area, and if there were I would like to get out of here before they show up."

"Good idea." The Commander agreed, quickly taking the lead to the way back to the battletram.

About halfway on the trip back, Jimmy suddenly groaned.

"What is it robot?" The Commander asked, looking over at the other with confusion and slight worry.

"We should Have taken the truck back."

"Or at least taken it's gas." Eaglebones groaned as well.

"Well, it's too late now." The Commander responded with a grin. He was pretty displeased with having to walk now that he realized there was a much better way, but he also thought it was rather funny how no one had considered the idea until just now.

Ricky sighed, folding his arms behind his head. Crash just frowned, kicking a rock grumpily as they went along.

The return trip felt much longer to all of them then the way there. Maybe it was because they were already tired, or that they were moving a little slower thanks to the added baggage. No matter what the reason was, by the time they returned to the Battletram it was already beginning to get dark.

"Hey-" Crash squinted, staring at their vehicle intently. "Look- is there a light on?"

Jimmy stopped, all the others following suit behind him as they looked at the van as well. And, just like Crash had brought up, it seemed as though one of the lights inside was left on. Except there was one problem with that...

"We didn't have any lights on before we left." The Commander pointed out slowly, a nervous tone evident in his voice.

"I don't think those things know how to work a light switch." Ricky said.

"Do you think that means there's a survivor?" Crash asked the others, a smile on his face.

"I don't see why not." Jimmy answered, the others looking at one another with hope and glee at the thought of more living people.

"Still, we should be careful..." Eaglebones muttered. "Just in case."

"I agree." The Commander said, beginning to walk again at a much slower pace than before.

They reached the door, and MCBC stepped back and looked at Jimmy.

"I think you should open it robot." He smiled at the other.

"What? Commander, why don't you just-"

"Oh for the Sun God's sake..." Eaglebones groaned, stepping past the others and throwing the entrance to the Battletram open with a scowl.

The hall light was on, and the guitar player backed up again, probably startled by confirming that; yes, someone was inside.

"I know we didn't leave that on..." Ricky mumbled nervously to himself, taking a step closer to Crash without really thinking about it.

"Definitely not." Jimmy agreed quietly as he stepped inside the vehicle.

There was a quiet muffled noise coming from the main room. All of the Aquabats exchanged nervous looks with one another, not sure if they were ready to see what waited for them on the other side of the metal door.

"So..." The Commander whispered, looking over at his friends. "Which one of us is going to open it?"

"Not me." Eaglebones immediately responded, throwing up his hands. "I got the last one."

Crash shook his head as well, and Ricky quickly blurted out his signature catchphrase of "Don't look at me!"

The Commander and Jimmy looked at each other, both frowning and not ready for the responsibility of seeing what was behind lucky door number one.

"Rock paper scissors?" MCBC asked with a nervous smile and a little giggle.

Jimmy was in the middle of rolling his eyes when the door they were all crowded around suddenly opening, effectively startling them all and causing more than a few screams.

"Oh wow, look who it is." The figure on the other side of the door grinned, leaning against the frame with crossed arms. "I thought you losers were dead or something."

"Wh..." Eaglebones stepped forward, recognizing the voice and just who it was who had gotten into their home. "Eagleclaw?!"

"That's right bro. Did you guys miss me?"

"Not really." The Commander muttered under his breath to Jimmy. The robot shushed him as quietly as possible.

"What are you doing here?"

Eagleclaw looked down at his talons, pretending to pick at them out of boredom. "Well, I thought since this thing was empty maybe all of you fled the nest."

"Well we didn't, so you can leave now." The Commander grumbled.

Eagleclaw raised an eyebrow but continued on. "And since I love my baby brother so much, I thought it would only be fair to take care of the place."

"Love?" Ricky hissed. "You tried to blow us up last time we saw you!"

"It was a bomb of affection. Come on you're not all mad about that still are you?"

"Of course we're still mad!" Crash said, stepping forward with a clenched fist.

"No." Eaglebones sighed. "Just..."

"Go away and never come back?" The Commander offered the rest of the sentence.

"No." He repeated, giving the singer a dirty look. "I think you should leave."

The older Falconhawk brother snorted, standing up straight again. "Yeah see, I can't do that."

Everyone glanced at one another, worried that a confrontation was about to break out at anytime.

"Have you seen out there?" Eagleclaw was frowning, looking less mad at this point. "Do you really want to make your brother stay out there with those things?"

Eaglebones looked down at the floor nervously, crossing his arms.

"Kinda." The Commander answered, this time earning an elbow to the side from Jimmy.

"He has a point..." Ricky rubbed the back of his head, realizing that the other man had a point.

"Yeah, see?" Claw was smiling again, showing off his much too sharp canine teeth.

"Can we talk about this for a second?" The Commander interjected before the conversation could go any further. He quickly ushered everyone back and then shut the door.

"We can't just let him stay." The singer hissed at the other four men.

"I dunno Commander..." Eaglebones frowned. "We can't just...tell him to stay out there."

"I think we could."

"Commander, no." Jimmy said in an obviously angry tone of voice. "I don't like him much either, no offense Eaglebones."

"I don't blame you." The long haired Aquabat replied dryly.

"But we can't just leave him to die!"

"We don't know he would die! He could survive out there, come on robot don't do this." The robot shook his head at the Commander. "Someone's gotta be on my side!" The singer looked at the other Aquabats, earning only head shakes in response.

"It's not right Commander." Crash said quietly. Even though he was slightly afraid of Eaglebones' older brother, he knew it wouldn't be appropriate to force him out where it was too dangerous to be for almost any length of time.

"Oh, fine." The Commander was scowling when he pressed the button to open the door again, revealing Eagleclaw had not moved or wiped the dumb grin off of his face.

"So?" He asked, much too smug for the Commander's taste. The Aquabat's leader looked over at the others, as if asking if it was appropriate now to tell him to take a hike.

"You can stay, Eagleclaw." Eaglebones said, his arms still crossed across his chest.

Eagleclaw's grin grew, and he walked back to the couch and plopped down. "Thanks for that bro."

The Commander looked at the other Aquabats with a huge frown, obviously more than a little displeased with the way things had not turned out in his favor. He sighed, then exited the room, making his way to the cockpit.

The others followed him, leaving no one but the two Falconhawk brother's behind.

There was an awkward silence, the two of them just staring at each other without saying anything for an extended period of time. Of course they wouldn't be on perfect terms right off, the last time they had seen each other it had been to fight. Needless to say, that didn't make conversation very easy.

Eaglebones, still nervous, walked over to the couch and sat a ways away from the other man.

They looked at one another, and then looked away from each other once more without so much as a peep.

It was uncomfortable, more so than most people would be able to stand, but Eaglebones knew he had to say SOMETHING to his brother. No matter what it was, he felt that it just wasn't right to have the other stay here without some kind of closure on their last interaction.

"I'm..." Eaglebones leaned forward, and looked over at his older brother with a small smile. "I'm glad you're okay."

Eagleclaw snorted, and turned to his little brother. "You don't need to pretend to be nice."

Eaglebones frowned. "I'm not pretending, I'm really glad you're alright." He rubbed his arm and glanced away. "I didn't want the last time we saw each other to be you trying to...kill me."

Eagleclaw hummed quietly to himself and rolled his head a little, looking away from his younger brother. "Well, looks like it wasn't."

Eaglebones sighed in frustration, standing up and exiting the room. He quickly made his way to the cockpit where the others were, and buckled himself into his seat with a grunt.

"So, how'd it go?" The Commander grinned cockily, just wanting to rub it in that he was right about the other man staying being an unpleasant experience.

"Infuriatingly bad." The guitar player grumbled, sinking down further into the chair.

Ricky put a hand on his friend's shoulder, trying to be a bit comforting.

"Are you sure you don't want to toss him to the zombies?" The Commander asked, looking out the window with a grin. "Look, there's a lot of them in that field! I bet he'd barely suffer."

"Commander, I don't think being eaten alive can be anything short of excruciating." Jimmy said, looking at the Commander rather disapprovingly.

"Sh, robot he doesn't need to hear that." Jimmy rolled his eyes.

"I think he knows, Commander."

"I can hear you! We are in the same room!" Eaglebones hissed at the others.

"Jeez, touchy..." Crash mouthed, looking away from the others.

"What are we going to do about him anyway?" Ricky asked leaning forward in his seat and looking over at the Commander.

"We'll see what happens." Jimmy answered, not sure himself. He figured that things weren't going to change too much with a plus one, but nothing was going to be easier. In fact, he wasn't sure how they were going to feed five people now. He sighed out loud.

"What is it robot? Did you come to your senses, can we kick him out now?"

"No Commander we are NOT kicking out Eaglebones' brother!"

"Then what is it?" He repeated, leaning down a bit in his seat like a child throwing a fit.

"We're going to need even more supplies now..."

"And we can come, right?" Ricky asked excitedly.

"Probably not." Jimmy answered. "I think the closest place to get things is a nearby mall."

"A mall?" The Commander jolted up, looking happily over to the robot and practically bouncing in his seat. "Now you have to let us go!"

"No!" Jimmy said, having to stop himself from smacking the wheel in frustration. "Don't you know how dangerous that'll be?!

The Commander sighed, moving back down again. "You never let us do anything fun."

"I let you come today and look what happened!"

"No one got hurt." Ricky pointed out.

"That's..." Jimmy sighed, knowing the youngest Aquabat was right in a way. "That's not the point, okay? Eaglebones almost got hurt."

"But I didn't."

"You ALMOST did."

"We might as well be zombies if you never let us out of the battletram. Come on, Jimmy. You can't expect us to stay in here all the time."

The robot frowned, uncomfortable about where this conversation was going. "I know." He sighed, feeling guilty. "But... I just..."

"Jimmy, baby, come on."

"I don't want anything bad to happen to you."

Each of the Aquabats looked around, trying to avoid looking directly at the robot. All four of them were now feeling pretty guilty as well about putting so much pressure on the robot. Of course they had known the reasons for what Jimmy did, but him vocalizing it like that just reminded that what they were doing was probably pretty hard on their friend.

An uncomfortable silence fell over the room, everyone avoiding looking at one another and refusing to start another conversation.

Eventually they all realized how dead all their conversation attempts were, and everyone kind of just let it all die. Soon they decided it'd just be better to call it a night.

The Commander was the first to unbuckle himself. "I, uhm, guess I'm going to sleep now." He looked uneasily over to the robot, who actually seemed to be sulking.

"Yeah, me too." Crash quickly said, unbuckling himself and following the Commander out.

"I'm gonna go...try and talk to my brother..." Eaglebones mumbled rather quickly, unbuckling his seat belt and exiting the room.

"Hey, Jimmy, you gonna be okay?" Ricky asked, moving in an awkward position to try and see the robot while still seated behind him.

"Yeah." Jimmy switched the Battletram into autopilot mode, turning back and looking at the runner. "Thanks. You should probably head off to bed as well."

Ricky nodded, standing up. He made his way to the exit of the battletram, pressing the button and watching the door open. Then, he turned around.

"I know you mean well... But you can't protect us from everything."

Jimmy sighed, holding his head in his hands. "I know."

Ricky smiled at the robot warmly. "We'll be okay Jimmy, promise." And with that, he exited.

"I wish I could believe you..." Jimmy whispered quietly to himself.

. . .

The next morning, while Jimmy was recharging, the rest of the Aquabats were trying to get used to having Eagleclaw around the battletram, which was something much easier said than done.

"So, what have you been doing this...whole time." Ricky asked, making a face at the avian-like man.

"Whaddya mean?"

"Well, for starters, there's infected-"

"Zombies." The Commander interrupted to correct him.

"-everywhere out there. How did you manage to stay alive this long without a house or anything?"

Eagleclaw rolled his eyes. "I made a nest in the trees and lived like a bird."

"Really?" Ricky asked, eyes widening.

"He's kidding." Eaglebones said blandly, rolling his eyes at how gullible his friend seemed to be.

"You just gotta be smarter than they are." Eagleclaw said, leaning back in the chair and looking at Ricky. "Which seems like it'd be pretty hard for you."

The Commander rolled his eyes as well, trying not to laugh at the man's insult. He tossed a rubber ball from one of his hands to the other, entertaining himself as he idly listened to the conversation. Crash was up in the cockpit driving, he had been trying his best to stay as far away from the older Falconhawk brother as he could.

"Ha ha." Ricky responded sarcastically, crossing his arms and looking away from the clawed man with a frown, becoming more and more annoyed with each second he had to interact with Eagleclaw.

"What have you been eating this whole time?" Eaglebones asked his brother, genuinely curious if he could help them get more stuff if he had, in fact, been eating something other than canned food like they had.

Eagleclaw shrugged. "This and that."

Eaglebones sighed in frustration. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means what it means." Eagleclaw sneered back.

"Okay." The younger brother sighed, standing up. "I'm going to go...hang out with Crash or something." He grumbled as he exited the room.

"Wonder what his problem is." Eagleclaw snickered and looked over at Ricky.

"Yeah, it's a mystery." The runner muttered under his breath as he sunk further down in his seat, chin resting on his hand.

"I wonder too." The Commander added sarcastically, still tossing the ball around.

"Don't you guys do anything fun around here?" Eagleclaw pretended to yawn.

"Not anymore with you here." Commander said much too quietly for either of the other two to hear.

"Uh, usually we wait for Jimmy to finish charging before we do anything, actually..." Ricky answered.

"Mmmm, why doesn't your robot buddy just sleep when you do?"

"He doesn't think that's safe."

"Oh boy, what is he your mother?" Eagleclaw snorted rudely.

"Wow, hold on there." The Commander sat up from where he was on the floor, glaring up at Eaglebones' older brother. "Don't even try insulting Jimmy."

"Yeah, come on!" Ricky added, even if it wasn't very much of a useful contribution to the conversation.

"I bet he doesn't let you guys do anything." Ricky and the Commander exchanged a worried look, and Eagleclaw took notice of this. "Oh, no way."

"Hey, he means well alright?"

"Does he not let you go outside? Do you have a robot nanny?" The clawed man sat up even further, his malicious grin only growing in size. "Aw, do the little Aquababies need their mommy to look after them?" He cooed sarcastically.

"That's enough." The Commander hissed, quickly losing his patience with this whole conversation and the man they were having it with.

"Aw, what? Protective of your mommy?"

The Commander scowled, and looked over at Ricky. "You deal with this clownbag, I'm gonna go sit with Crash and Bones before I beat him silly." Ricky nodded, and watched the singer exit the room.

"Now what, Lassie?" Eagleclaw asked, looking over to the runner.

"I'm not doing this." Ricky mumbled, standing up and following the other man's lead and exiting the room and the conversation.

Eagleclaw snickered more, folding his arms behind his head and readjusting himself on the couch. He closed his eyes, feeling pretty proud of the job he did annoying the band.

. . .

"I can't believe him." The Commander complained, tossing his hands up in the air once he reached the front of the battletram where his friends were. Ricky was close behind, also considerably enraged.

"Yeah, he sure is something isn't he?" Eaglebones said from the passenger seat, turning to look at the two as they entered.

"Something awful more like it..." The Commander grumbled, stopping next to Eaglebones and waiting for the smallest Aquabat to get out of his seat.

"How is he so...so..."

"Infuriating?"

"Yeah." Ricky grumbled as he sat down in his seat, buckling up with a frown still firmly in place on is face. Eaglebones soon sat down by his side, putting a hand on the shorter male's arm.

"See? That's why I don't want to hang around him." Crash finally spoke up with a grin on his face, feeling smart about his decision.

"Maybe we could learn a thing or two from you then." The Commander said under his breath as he looked out the window, watching the scenery go by and trying his best to ignore the undead that were shuffling about.

Crash shrugged, hearing the other's complaint. "I dunno Commander, maybe you should."

Suddenly, the door to the cockpit opened, and in walked exactly who they were complaining about.

"Oh you've gotta be kidding me." The Commander hissed loudly.

"Don't be so mean, I have feelings too." Eagleclaw smirked, placing a claw on his chest as he pretended to be hurt by the comment.

"I doubt it."

Eagleclaw sat down in Crash's usual seat behind the Commander, putting his feet on the back of said Aquabat's chair.

"Do you mind?" The Commander seethed, looking back at the man sitting behind him.

"Oh, not at all." Eagleclaw grinned evilly.

The Commander looked over at Eaglebones' with narrowed eyes. "Can you control your brother?" He said through gritted teeth.

"I don't know what you want me to do." Bones answered, looking away from the other's angry gaze.

"Yeah, he's my little brother. He can't do much."

Eaglebones clicked his teeth, and crossed his legs without a further comment.

"I, uh, have to go to the bathroom." Crash blurted out uncomfortably. "Can someone else drive?"

"I'll do it." Eaglebones volunteered, undoing his seat belt and moving seats once more.

"I'm..coming with you?" Ricky said sheepishly, just trying to get out of the room as well.

"Well that's..." Eagleclaw raised his eyebrow, trailing off without any type of clever comment to say about something so...weird.

The two men left, and the Commander was already regretting not following as Eagleclaw began 'readjusting' his legs, which meant he was practically just kicking the other man's seat repeatedly like a small toddler would

"Can- you- stop?" The Commander asked, saying a word with each kick to the back of his seat.

"No." Came the response and Eagleclaw's huge and mischievous grin could practically be heard oozing into the word.

"Bones." The singer looked over to the long haired man who was now driving. "I'm gonna kill this clownbag you call a brother."

"That's fine." Eaglebones responded blandly, eyes half lidded as he looked on the road ahead.

"Wow, I thought you didn't have any bad feelings toward me bro."

"You are being a clownbag." Eaglebones responded flatly.

"Yeah, see?" The Commander was grinning again, pleased that someone was still agreeing with him once more.

Eagleclaw made a 'tsk' noise with a click of his tongue, a cocky smile still firmly in place on his face. "You guys aren't very welcoming, are you?"

"You aren't very easy to welcome are you?" The Commander retorted, crossing his arms snootily.

"Oh, that hurt." Eagleclaw mocked, leaning his head back and closing his eyes.

"Oh that hurt." The Commander mocked in a high pitched voice before sticking out his tongue and making a crude fart noise, effectively spitting on everything in front of him.

"Real mature." Eagleclaw called back to the other, opening one eye and looking at the man in front of him as he kicked the seat one more time.

The Commander, deciding he had enough, undid his seat belt and stormed out of the room without another word.

"Oh, looks like that seats open." Eagleclaw said with a grin, immediately switching up to the passenger seat. "It's like a first class upgrade." He said, looking around as if suddenly in a new room he had never seen before.

Eaglebones looked over at his brother with a frown, taking his eyes off the road for just a second. "You did that on purpose, didn't you?"

"Hm?" Eagleclaw looked over to his brother with a lazy head lull. "What ever do you mean dear sweet little brother?"

Eaglebones sighed, and shook his head slightly. "I can't say I'm surprised."

"What can I say? I wanted alone time with you."

"You couldn't have just asked?"

"Where's the fun in that?" Eagleclaw asked, pretending to be innocent.

"Do you just like patronizing my friends?"

"Oh, don't be silly Eaglebones." Eagleclaw looked over to his brother, claw splayed over his chest as though he was offended or something to that affect. "I enjoy messing with you just as much."

"Oh boy," Eaglebones said sarcastically. "just what I wanted to hear."

"You learned well." Eagleclaw grinned in response to his brothers sarcasm.

"Because I learned from the best."

"Oh you're too much." Eagleclaw grinned mischievously, batting his eyelashes at the other male ridiculously.

Eaglebones snorted, and couldn't help but feel a smile begin creeping it's way on his lips. His brother was something alright, and pretty hard to get along with or even deal with sometimes, but he was happy to see they were getting along as well as they were. Even if he was pretty rude to his friends, Bones couldn't help but like his brother at least a little bit.

"Hey- stop the car!" Eagleclaw suddenly screeched, effectively scaring his brother enough to cause him to slam on the brakes and send them both lurching forward. There was a distant crash noise from another room and in just a few seconds the three other human Aquabats entered the room.

"What happened!?" The Commander asked, out of breath.

"Did we hit something?"

Eaglebones raised an eyebrow and looked over at his brother skeptically, trying to figure out just why he had him stop.

Eagleclaw quickly unbuckled his seat belt and dashed out of the battletram, hopping out into the street and dashing back a few feet to a shopping cart. The others quickly scrambled out after him, Crash leading them.

"What is it?" The Commander panted after catching up to the other man.

"Its..." Eaglebones squinted, pulling something out of the cart " Food!"

"And gas." Eagleclaw added, smiling and shaking the can he had picked up.

"Oh man, that's great!" Crash cheered. "Jimmy's gonna be so happy."

"Uh...guys?" Came Ricky's shaky voice, staring behind them with wide eyes.

They all turned slowly, and it seemed like their hearts stopped when they each saw exactly what it was that Ricky had pointed at with a shaky hand. There, barely over 20 feet behind them, was a very large group of zombies.

"Oh my..." The Commander's eyes widened, and his jaw went slack. None of them had brought any weapons, and it seemed all five of them were just all paused like deer in headlights.

"Run!" Crash quickly shouted, and everyone broke into a rapid run towards their vehicle, Eagleclaw pushing the shopping cart full of supplies.

Luckily for them, the battletram hadn't been very far away from them at all. The run barely took half a minute, and a good thing too because the horde had only been just a seconds time behind them. It seemed the exact moment the battletram's door was shut, there was infected banging on it.

Crash quickly dashed up to the cockpit, almost tripping over his own feet as he ran. He strapped himself into the driver's seat and started the van, speeding off as soon as was physically possible.

"Oh man that was GREAT!" Eaglebones shouted, throwing his arms around his brother and friends. He was laughing excitedly, and still shaking from the adrenaline rush. "I can't believe we made it!"

"And with all the stuff too!" Ricky added with a large grin, looking through the contents of the shopping cart.

"I hate to say it, but great job out there Eagleclaw." The Commander said, smiling just as large as everyone else was.

The bird like man smirked at the singer, obviously pleased with himself and his performance. "It's what I do." He replied nonchalantly, but it was pretty apparent he was happy and more than grateful to receive the compliment from the Aquabat.

"Wow, look at all this stuff." Ricky interrupted, holding up a can in each of his hands. "There's all types of things here! Peaches, beans, corn...and bread?" He turned his head to the side, inspecting the can labeled 'bread' with a rather confused expression.

"Huh? Oh, yeah, that stuff is pretty gross." Eagleclaw pointed out, plucking the bread can from Ricky's hand and placing it back in the cart with a noisy clatter. Ricky looked up at the older man, but didn't say anything and instead just returned to looking through all of it.

"Oh jeez, what are we gonna tell Jimmy about this?" The Commander said nervously, knowing the robot was definitely not going to be pleased to know they risked their life for...well, anything actually.

"Tell Jimmy about what?" Came a new voice from behind them, scaring Ricky enough to cause him to jump slightly and drop the cans he had had in his hands.

"This." Eagleclaw said, stepping aside and showing Jimmy the shopping cart full of food and gas.

"Wh-" The robot stepped forward, looking at it. Then, he smiled at the others. "This is perfect!" The three Aquabats looked at each other in mutual confusion, trying to figure out what was going on.

"You mean...that we got supplies?"

"Yes, of course!" The robot was grinning largely, one that could almost rival the expressions from when everyone first returned to the battletram with the haul. "Now we don't have to bother stopping at the mall."

"Wait, what?" Eagleclaw quickly interjected. "A mall?"

The robot nodded. "Yes, I was considering stopping at the mall about a mile down the road from here. But, since you all managed to get this, we don't really need to stop now do we?" Jimmy seemed very pleased with this turn of events.

"No one said anything about a mall." Eagleclaw looked over at the others. "You guys knew about the mall business?"

"Yeah, but we didn't think we were going to be allowed to go anyway. What's the big deal?"

"We have to stop at the mall."

Jimmy frowned. "Absolutely not. This should be enough to last for quite some time, so what would be the point of stopping at the mall?"

"Malls have weapons, clothes, more food." Eagleclaw was basically sneering at the robot by this time, taking a step forward. "We have to go to the mall."

"I wouldn't mind it." Ricky said with a shrug, looking forward to the possibility of getting out of the battletram again. They probably didn't need the excitement after what had just happened only moments before, and even the day before, but going to the mall sure beat the idea of staying cooped up inside and playing more go fish.

"Yeah, Jimmy come on. It's just the mall, it wouldn't make THAT much sense for it to be crawling with zombies. Besides, if it is we can just not go in." The Commander tried to convince the robot.

"No. Absolutely not, we can't. That just... doesn't sound like a good idea. At all." Jimmy was shaking his head rather furiously now. "We have enough stuff for right now, we just don't need to stop for a while."

Eagleclaw snorted. "Why should we even keep going?" He crossed his arms across his chest. "What's the point? There's no where to go."

Ricky looked nervous, glancing around uncomfortably. "I'm going to go...sit with Crash." He said quickly before exiting the room, not liking the direction the conversation was going in.

"Was that necessary?" Jimmy hissed.

"Hey, even Lassie's gotta grow up and face the truth sometime." Eagleclaw sneered.

"Dude, come on." Eaglebones said to his brother, frowning at his behavior.

Jimmy sighed, more than well aware he could do nothing to make Eagleclaw behave more civilized. "Well, I'm going up there too." He practically glared at Eaglebones' brother. "Don't even think about following for a while." And with that, the robot turned on his heels and left them there.

"That was really...not cool dude." The Commander said finally after a few seconds of silence, looking over at the older Falconhawk brother.

"Y'know what else isn't cool? The way that robot treats you like kids."

The Commander and Eaglebones shot each other a look, then turned their attention back to Eagleclaw.

"You're big boys, I think you should be able to decide what you want to do by now." He crossed his arms, and leaned against the wall. "I mean, if you want to go to the mall you should be able to. Or anything for that matter, it's not like he's the boss of you."

"He means well, he just gets a little too...overprotective now. Ever since this mess began..." The Commander trailed off, looking down at the floor as he finished.

"Mhm, yeah, a lot of good overprotective-ness ever did anybody. You're adults; you can make decisions for yourself by now."

Eaglebones rubbed the back of his head, knowing his brother did have a good point. Jimmy had been very...overbearing lately, and it was not only uncomfortable but a little insulting as well. He acted like they were too fragile to see the world outside of the battletram. As if they hadn't always risked their lives before this mess.

Eagleclaw looked over to the Commander, inspecting him from head to toe with a raised eyebrow and a strange expression on his face that no one could quite put a name on. "Isn't your name the 'commander'?"

"Uhm, yeah?"

"Well then maybe you should act like it and start commanding."

That sentence might as well have been some kind of magic words, because the singer immediately nodded and marched straight to the cockpit.

"Jimmy." The Commander greeted as soon as the door was open and he stepped inside.

"Yes, Commander?" The robot asked, looking over to the other man.

"We're going to the mall."


	4. Chapter 4

"What?" The robot seemed startled by this sudden demand, reacting as though someone had just punched him in the face.

"Commander?" Ricky sounded almost as stunned as Jimmy had been.

For a moment, the singer almost seemed deterred by the reaction he received, but a quick poke in the back from both Falconhawk brothers reminded him that this is something he had to do.

"We're going to the mall, and were gonna get more supplies, and that's final." He said in the most stern voice he could muster, earning even more bewildered looks from his band-mates.

"What's this about?" Jimmy asked with a skeptical tone and a raised brow as he starred at the Commander.

"It's about us going to the mall, duh robot." He replied in his normal tone of voice, walking the rest of the way into the room with the guitar playing siblings close behind him. Jimmy narrowed his eyes at the eldest of the two, obviously already aware exactly why the Commander was suddenly saying this.

"It's because of something Eagleclaw said, isn't it?" The sentence was said bitterly, perfectly showing how Jimmy felt about the entire situation.

The Commander paused for a moment, taken aback by the correctness of the robot's statement. "No, it's because of they way you've been forcing us to stay cooped up in here all the time!"

"I just let you come along yesterday, why isn't that enough for you!"

"'Let' see, you make them sound like you're their mother." Eagleclaw suddenly but in, posing an accusing talon at the keyboardist.

"What-"

"Yeah, Jimmy, it's just a little trip to the mall. You shouldn't be so upset about it." Eaglebones said, in a softer tone than the others had been speaking in.

"If we want to go, you should let us."

Crash and Ricky, who were sitting in the front seats, both began looking pretty nervous about what was happening. They glanced at each other, worried that maybe some kind of fight was about to break out in the small cockpit.

"Please." Jimmy pleaded, looking over to the Commander. "It's not safe-"

"I know." The Commander cut him off. "And I- we- still want to go. Jimmy, please, you can't keep treating us like we don't know what we're doing."

"We're all adults here." Eagleclaw smiled, before glancing over to Ricky. "Well, almost all of us."

The runner only rolled his eyes in silence.

"You're not going to win this, Jimmy." The singer said, looking the robot in the eyes sympathetically as he did so.

"Commander, please. I have a bad feeling about this-"

"Who cares? We're going." Eagleclaw said in an unwavering tone as he stared at Jimmy coldly.

Jimmy nodded, realizing how hopeless all the pleading was and how it was getting him nowhere. "Alright. Let's go to the mall." He sighed, holding his head in his hands.

Eagleclaw smiled, relishing in his victory of the moment. The Commander whooped in excitement.

"Get ready to turn Crash, we're going to the mall!"

. . .

The 'mall' was a huge, three story shopping center. After they had all climbed out of the battletram (luckily in the zombie apocalypse parking spaces weren't exactly an issue) all six of the men stared up at the building in total awe, amazed by just how huge it was.

The outside of the mall was dirty and rather disgusting. There were a few cars parked haphazardly, even one crashed into the glass of one of the shops in the building itself. There was old and browning blood splotches on most of the gravel that made up the parking lot. There was a lot of various types of litter thrown about, stuff like cups and old fliers that were blowing in the wind. All in all, the mall was in a completely awful and pretty depressing state.

"I think it's already been looted of anything we could want." Jimmy said, turning to his friends. He was wringing his hands in front of him nervously, making it well known he was less than okay with going inside. Though that was honestly to be expected since he hadn't wanted to go to the mall in the first place.

"Jimmy, come on. We're all gonna be okay." The Commander wrapped one of his arms around the robot's shoulder, the other holding Crash's old golf club. "Where's your sense of adventure?"

"I think it died with about half of the world's population." Jimmy replied with a frown, not even bothering to look oer to the man attempting to 'comfort' him.

Eagleclaw whistled, and it took the Commander a good ten seconds to realize the other man had not been whistling and making fun of him, but was instead making the noise at the paper he had picked up off of the ground. "Well well well, look at what we have here." He grinned, handing the paper to his brother who had been standing next to him.

"A gun show." Eaglebones said with a large grin, looking over to his fellow Aquabats excitedly.

Crash smiled, showing off his teeth and he turned to look at Ricky who was standing beside him and doing the same.

"I doubt there will be anything useful left." Jimmy repeated nearly the same thing as he had last time. He was continuing to try and reason with everyone to get them to leave before anything bad could even have the chance to happen, but to no avail. His friends, and Eagleclaw, were all to excited to bother with listening to reason and realize the robot was right and it was incredibly dangerous for them to be there.

"We'll never know if we don't go in and check it out for ourselves, robot." The Commander said pointedly, as if he had said something incredibly profound and intelligent.

"I think that might be for the best." Jimmy replied dryly before sighing, knowing he was in a losing battle with people much more stubborn than he was.

Eagleclaw crumpled the paper into a small ball, and tossed it back onto the ground like the trash it really was. "Let's go." He said with a toothy grin, showing off his strange and sharper than was normal canines.

Jimmy sighed. "Can we not?"

"No." Eagleclaw responded completely matter of factly, still grinning like a mad man.

Jimmy frowned more as they made the group began to make their way into the dingy building.

Inside was probably in even worse condition than the outside was. It was dark, despite it really being midday and the floor was coated in a thick layer of dirt and scattered shards of glass littered the floor as well (probably from the car that was stuck halfway in the building).

Eagleclaw made a grossed out face as he looked at all the garbage and everything else on the floor.

"Oh, this is kinda..." Ricky scrunched his nose up in disgust as well as he lifted a foot and looked at just how much stuff he had stepped in. "Hm." He tried to play it off as cool as he could, despite finding this whole situation to become completely revolting so quickly.

"So." The Commander put his free hand on his hip, the other tapping the gold club on the ground rhythmically. "Where first?"

"We should probably look for where the gun show was taking place." Jimmy said, knowing if they were going to be there they might as well get as many things they needed as possible.

"I thought you said they probably didn't have anything left?" Eagleclaw smirked at the robot, obviously just trying to get under his skin.

Jimmy sighed, bringing his hand to the bridge of his nose. "If were already here we might as well check." He looked over to the brothers who had been the only ones to have actually seen the fliers. "Did it say where exactly it was being held?"

Bones and Claw looked at each other, realizing that there might have just been a fatal mistake in their plan. "Uh..."

"Oh great." Jimmy grumbled.

"Guys, over here!" Ricky called, waving his arms above his head to get the other's attention. Crash was at his side pointing to a large sign shaped thing, which was probably what Ricky was trying to get them to look at. Everyone jogged over to the duo, realizing they had found was a map of the shopping mall.

"Oh, nice job guys!" Eaglebones congratulated the two men. Crash and Ricky beamed at each other, then high fived with a cheer.

"Does it have where the show is though?" Eagleclaw sneered at the duo.

"Uh..." Crash looked over at the drummer who just shrugged in response. He rubbed the back of his neck, looking back over to the map; visibly discouraged.

"Yes." Jimmy turned back to the clawed man, an unamused expression in place on his face once he realized that the older bird-like man was just trying to give the others a hard time. He moved an arm out of its crossed position and pointed to a little star on the second floor. "It's in this event room."

"Oh." Eagleclaw grinned, liking just how quickly he was able to get on the robot's nerves. "Well then, I guess we better head there then shouldn't we?"

"Yeah." The Commander said, looking between the two men with a raised eyebrow. The Commander was actually quite a bit surprised at how passive aggressive they were acting towards one another, but then again he didn't blame Jimmy for not getting a long with Eagleclaw. Heck, he still could barely stand the avian-like man himself.

Crash and Ricky, who both just really wanted to avoid as much as the conflict and tension as possible, offered to lead the way to the room.

"No." Jimmy was quick to turn their idea down. "It'd be safer if I lead the way." The robot shot a glare in Eagleclaw's direction, but said nothing else as he began walking.

As he said he would, Jimmy lead the way with the Commander following close behind him. Following the Commander was the Falconhawk brothers, who seemed to have reconciled their relationship at least enough fr them to be quietly whispering to one another. Bringing up the rear was Crash an Ricky, both of whom were silent the whole way there, but looked at each other uneasily every once in a while when they feared another fight or something similar to affect that would arise.

The trip to the large room was relatively uneventful, and almost dead silent save for the occasional whisper from the group. Actually, it was TOO uneventful and silent for Jimmy's taste, and with each passing step he feared that any moment they would turn a corner and run smack dab into the center of a large horde of zombies. The Commander shared this anxiety, and seemed to be a lot less energized than usual. Probably a side effect of how worried and anxious he appeared to be.

The group of six climbed an escalator, which wasn't working due to the lack of electricity in the building, and they tried to ignore both the large amounts of garbage everywhere and the smell that began assaulting their nostrils more and more with each passing step.

"Ugh, what IS that?" The Commander asked, pinching his noise between two fingers.

"Smells like old roadkill..." Eagleclaw grunted.

"Do you think it's the zombies?" Crash asked, worried about what was going to happen when they reached the top of the stairs. He may not have been afraid of zombies, but dying was never exactly a pleasant thought either way.

"Nah, it smells a little... different somehow." Eaglebones answered, shaking his head a little bit as he did so.

Jimmy, also worried about what the smell could be, decided it'd probably be in their best interest for him to scan the area for anything. As Eaglebones ha suggested, it appeared there were no infected nearby on the second floor. However there was something less dangerous, but even more unsettling.

Upon reaching the top stair, Jimmy froze like a deer in the headlights. He quickly extended his arms to the side, preventing any of the others from advancing as well.

"What is it? What do you see?"

Eagleclaw was scowling, half tempted to push himself past the robot.

The Commander stood on his tiptoes, moving around awkwardly trying to look past Jimmy's shoulders. Then, he caught a glimpse at why it was the robot had stopped.

"Oh my God." The singer gasped, turning around quickly and clasping his hand over his mouth as though he was about to throw up from whatever it was he saw waiting for them on the second floor.

"What is it?" Eaglebones asked with a waver in his voice and panic quickly becoming evident in both the way he was standing and the way he was talking.

"I think we should find another way up." Jimmy said, his voice wavering slightly as well.

"Y-yeah." The Commander agreed nervously, still completely shaken up by what he had seen on the second floor.

"Crash?" Jimmy said, as a way to signal for the largest Aquabat to begin walking down once more.

Scared just by their reactions, the two at the end of the group began to quickly jog down the stairs.

"I think there's a second set of escalators on both the east and north ends of the first floor." The robot informed the others, shaking his head slightly and trying to get the image of what he'd seen out of his head. Though something told him he wouldn't be able to forget the sight of over a hundred uninfected dead bodies.

"Guys-" Crash stopped suddenly, causing Ricky to immediately walk straight into his back. "Run." The larger man added quietly.

"What?" Eagleclaw half yelled back.

"Run!" Crash screamed, realizing it was much too late to try and be quiet.

Jimmy looked and realized what it was the bigger Aquabat had seen. Near the door, where they'd been only moments ago, was roughly forty or more infected all staring up at the men on the escalator.

"Go go go!" Crash ushered them more, getting everyone to move as fast as possible since he was at the end and the closest to the zombies.

The Commander and Jimmy didn't even have time to think of worrying about the fact everyone would have to see the scene upstairs. But that wasn't even that important when it was a life and death matter.

"There's the event room!" Jimmy shouted, pointing to a door that was already slightly propped open.

"Go!" Crash was still shouting in a panic, turning and freaking out when he saw just how close the zombies were to him.

Jimmy grabbed the door to their destination, and threw it open. He immediately stopped dead in his tracks when he got a glimpse inside the room.

"Oh you're kidding me! There's more?!" The Commander shouted as Jimmy slammed the door shut and ran to the left.

"That's a dead end!" Eagleones shouted, knwoing it was far too late for them to go any other direction now.

"We're going to be a dead end too!" Eagleclaw screamed.

"Not yet!" Ricky said, eyes widening as if he had a sudden epiphany. He stepped out of the line, and then turned around to face the horde that had been chasing them all this way.

"Ricky?" Jimmy skid to a stop realizing the other had some kind of plan, one that he was almost certain he wouldn't like. Jimmy turned to look at the youngest Aquabat with an expression of pure horror. "What are you doing!?"

Ricky just grinned without answering, running full speed in the opposite direction of the way everyone else had been headed. The runner hopped onto a trashcan that had been flipped over. "Hey, look at me!" Ricky yelled, waving his arms over his head and made as much noise as humanely possible.

"Ricky!" The Commander shouted, sounding completely mortified. He stared at his friend with wide eyes, afraid of the scene that was currently unfolding in front of them.

The runner turned to the group, putting a finger over his lips as a sign for all of them to remain silent. He then turned his attention back to the zombies that had begun to form a group around him. "Get a nice tasty treat right here!"

Jimmy's eyes widened. "He's...distracting them."

Eagleclaw looked over at the robot with a confused expression. "What?"

"He's going to get them to follow him away from us." The robots voice was barely above the tone of a whisper, probably due to the fact that he was scared for Ricky.

Eaglebones' eyes suddenly widened as well, his head quickly whipping around to catch a glimpse of whatever it was the runner was doing. "Wh-" He sounded more confused than scared, though his face said otherwise.

They all watched in varying degrees of horror as Ricky hopped off of the trashcan and began running in the opposite direction of his friends. "I'm going to open the door to the event room and try to get them to follow me!" Ricky shouted over the sound of the zombies. It was barely audible over the noise of all of the undead groaning. "Good luck!"

"Wait- Ricky!" Crash lurched forward, only to be stopped quickly by the Commander.

"Sh." The singer tried to keep the larger man quiet enough to not get any of the infected's attention once more. They all waited until both Ricky and the zombies were out of view before they even tried to move towards the now open door to the event room.

Just as before, Jimmy took the lead and was the first one to catch a glimpse of what now awaited them on the inside.

"It's..." He paused, waiting for the others to gather around.

"It's empty!" Eagleclaw said in both rage and horror.

"No." Eaglebones pushed his way into the room, looking around in absolute mortified shock. "No no no no no..." He began repeating the word over and over, freaking out a bit more than everyone else was at this certain point in time.

"Commander?" Crash looked over to the singer.

"Yeah, Crash?" The Commander turned over to the larger man with a sympathetic look on his face.

"He's gonna be back right? Rickys gonna be okay isn't he?"

The Commander put his hand on Crash's shoulder and smiled at him. "Yeah, of course he'll be back! He can outrun those things no problem."

"He did kind of hop right into a group of them though." Eagleclaw was quick to point out, kicking a paper on the ground.

"We don't need that right now." Jimmy hissed.

"Right, then what DO we need mom?"

Jimmy scowled, and walked away from Eagleclaw without another word.

Eagleclaw snorted, and crossed his arms. "You don't even want to try and answer that, do you robot?" The man spit at him.

"That's enough!" Eaglebones shrieked at his brother. Eagleclaw was taken aback by this for a moment, and then frowned but stayed silent.

"So...what are we going to do?" The Commander asked, opening the door to the hall and peeking out. "It's empty out there again."

"We should wait here." Jimmy said simply. "This will probably be the first place Ricky will look when he comes back."

"What if he doesn't come back?" Crash asked quietly.

"He'll come back."

"Yeah, I believe that." Eagleclaw sneered quietly, low enough so no one but Eaglebones even heard him. The younger Falconhawk brother rolled his eyes and clicked his tongue before walking away from his brother and over near a huge window on the other side of the room.

The Commander followed the guitar player's lead, leaning his forehead against the cool glass to the right of the other Aquabat.

"He's gonna be fine." The Commander muttered quietly, looking over to Eaglebones without moving his head.

"I know."

The two of them quickly fell into a comfortable silence, staring at the parking lot below them and watching some infected shuffle about aimlessly. There were barely any animals in this side of the globe anymore, everything was able to leave did and anything that couldn't perished. It was hard to think about that, because the same was said for all the humans as well.

The five of them sat around in the event room for quite some time, eventually all of them were talking and laughing as though they were friends and nothing was wrong with the world, and for a while Crash almost felt like he wasn't missing his best friend.

Jimmy felt something gnaw at his insides, insisting that they should leave the mall immediately and just forget about Ricky and looking for anything else, but he didn't think about it for too long or even consider vocalizing it.

Soon the sun had set, and it quickly became night time. By then the feeling of discouragement was one felt by everyone in the room, though again no one dared to mention the thought.

"We should leave..." Jimmy mumbled, barely coherent and too quiet for anyone to bother taking seriously. Except, that is, for Eagleclaw.

"We should leave." He looked down at his talons as though uninterested in the subject. "Let's face it, hes not coming back."

"Who's not coming back?"

Everyone faced the door quickly, all five of the men who were sitting on the floor practically jaw dropped when they saw the smiling form of Ricky Fitness standing against the door frame without a single scratch on him.

"Ricky!" Crash scrambled to get up as fast as possible, and then ran to grab his friend in a bear hug that could almost crush anyone's bones.

"Crash!" Ricky giggled happily, not even minding being picked up and swung around like a rag doll. He did however mind that his arms were pinned so close to his sides that he couldn't hug his friend back.

"Well look who it is." Eagleclaw ginned once Crash set down the drummer and they both returned to the little circle of people sitting on the floor. "Thought you might have gotten lost, Lassie."

For once Ricky didn't seem bothered by the other's taunting in the slightest.

"How did you get back?"

"I gave them the slip." Ricky grinned large, all of his teeth and braces visible. "Come on, those zombies are slow!"

Jimmy was smiling warmly over to the youngest Aquabat. "I'm glad you're back."

"We all are, now we can go home!" The Commander said happily, standing up and stretching his arms and legs with a little groan.

"Yeah, sounds like a plan." Eaglebones stood and stretched as well. "That floor was making me sore..."

"We could all use some sleep I bet." Jimmy said once everyone was standing.

The Commander looked over to Ricky. "Those zombies aren't around here anywhere are they?"

"Mmmm, nope." Ricky shook his head. "I don't think so, I lead them kinda far away outside."

"So we could still look around the mall?" Eagleclaw asked.

Jimmy made an unpleased face at the other man. "Why would we do that?"

"Yeah and there's bodies everywhere." Crash said seeming rather uncomfortable, looking from side to side as though just saying the word would make something terrible happen.

"Hm." Eagleclaw grunted, but stayed quiet. Surprisingly, it seemed even he knew when to give up and stop talking, though he hadn't been the only one to think of exploring the place.

"For once I agree with him." The Commander said with a huge grin. "Come on guys, we came here to find stuff so why return empty handed? Besides, Ricky said all the zombies were gone so what's the hurry?"

Ricky frowned, looking like he didn't exactly enjoy being dragged into the argument that seemed inevitable. "Hey, uh, still this place is creepy..."

Jimmy crossed his arms over his chest, looking over to the Commander with a disapproving frown on his face. "You're outvoted either way." Jimmy looked at the dirty walls of the long abandoned mall. "Besides, I'm almost certain there's nothing for us here. Judging by how many infected there were this place was probably cleaned out long ago."

With a grumble, both Eagleclaw and the Commander decided that Jimmy was most likely right about all of that. The two gave in without any more of an argument over the matter.

After that argument had been settled, the group made their way carefully out of the room and into the hall. Now that all the zombies were gone and they didn't have anything to worry about, everyone seemed pretty shocked and bothered by the state of the second story floor.

"Look at all these people..." Eaglebones whispered, scanning over just how much room they took up.

"None of them are infected..." Ricky said in a quiet voice, his voice cracking and becoming barely audible before he even finished the short sentence.

"Yeah..." The Commander looked away from the floor uneasily, and quickly began to walk towards the escalator. "Let's just get out of here, this place is bad news."

"I wonder what was on the third floor." Crash asked idly, a bit too quiet for most of the group to hear.

"Nothing cool probably." Eagleclaw grumbled in response as he made his way across the floor, careful to step around the limbs and other body parts laying on the floor.

"What happened here?" Jimmy asked no one in particular, a deep frown on his face.

Most of the mall was darker, and thanks to that creepier, than it had been earlier. Most of it was pretty damn unsettling, and nearly all of them tripped more than once on the way down the escalator. This made Jimmy uncomfortable, and even though he could see just fine he was certain his friends were having a hard time navigating. Plus, Crash was getting more freaked out with each passing second and was holding onto the robot's arm with an iron grip as if he was going to get lost if he didn't hold on to it will all his strength.

"I can't wait to get in bed..." The Commander let out a dreamy sigh once they reached the outside. He put his arms behind his head, and just stood around waiting for all the others to catch up. He had gotten just a bit of a head start, and apparently that was enough to get ahead of everyone by almost twenty seconds.

Eagleclaw was the next to arrive outside, and just immediately made a beeline for the battletram and let himself in instead of waiting with the singer.

"What a jerk..." The Commander muttered under his breath as he watched Eagleclaw shut the door behind himself. "Hurry up guys!" He shouted towards the door.

Jimmy and Crash came out next, with the robot still trying to convince the larger Aquabat he could let go of him anytime.

Ricky came jogging out a few seconds later, and the Aquabats all stood there waiting for the last member.

"Where's Eaglebones?" Jimmy asked the drummer curiously while trying to pry Crash off with one hand.

"He's coming." Ricky looked over to the glass doors of the mall. "Ah, see there he is!"

Strolling out a little more casually than the others had, came Eaglebones with his hands in his short pockets and a yawn fading from his face.

"Alright, that's everyone." The Commander promptly turned on his heels and made his way to the battletram with everyone close behind.

Suddenly hearing a rather quiet squeaking noise, Jimmy quickly turned his head and was stunned into horrified silence. Noticing the way the robot was looking behind them, Ricky quickly turned around as well.

"Eaglebones!" He shouted, catching everyone's attention and causing them to all look at the man in the back. "BEHIND YOU!"

Eaglebones stopped turning around as fast as he could; but was still too slow. He didn't have time to react to anything as he watched, as if in slow motion, a zombie jump forward at him. As if on instinct he closed his eyes, and then felt agonizing pain.


	5. Chapter 5

It turns out, the awful pain he felt was his head hitting the concrete. Eaglebones just allowed himself to lay there with eyes squeezed shut for what seemed like eternity, until he felt something hot and wet begin dripping onto his face. Slowly, Eaglebones allowed himself to open his right eye and he practically felt like screaming when he saw what was hovering over him, which would be a site far more horrifying than any monster he had ever seen.

Above him, was Ricky. Squinting an eye shut in pain, he still had that stupid charming smile on his face. "You alright?" He asked the guitarist under him. Eaglebones was in stunned silence as he realized just what had been the hot red liquid on his face.

"Ricky got bit!" Came Crash's horrified yell from a few feet away, accompanied by frantic footsteps.

"Oh no." Jimmy began repeating over and over.

"I'm...I'm okay." Eaglebones finally answered, still staring completely stunned at the neat bite mark on Ricky's left shoulder.

Ricky's grin grew and changed into a smile, one that didn't belong on the face of someone who had gotten a chunk of flesh ripped right out of their arm. "That's great."

Eaglebones watched as Crash and Jimmy quickly pulled Ricky off the ground, and then began rushing him to the battletram. The guitar player quickly pushed himself up.

"Bones, you okay?" The Commander asked, looking between his friend and the others running towards the battletram.

"Yeah." Almost immediately after he was on his feet, Eaglebones began speed walking after the others.

"This is bad." The Commander murmured, jogging after his friends.

"What's going on?" Eagleclaw immediately hopped up when he noticed how panicked and rushed Crash and Jimmy looked with Ricky's arms in their grasp.

"He got bit." Crash managed out, stumbling over his words as though they were the most complicated tongue twister in the world and he was saying it with a mouth full of gum.

"What-" Eagleclaw's eyes widened as he caught a glimpse of the bite on Ricky's shoulder.

"No time. Crash come on, we have to get him to my lab now."

"Okay Jimmy." The bass player eagerly began to go the direction of the robot's lab.

Despite being able to walk himself, Ricky just kind of allowed himself to get dragged down the battletram's halls by his friends.

Upon reaching the lab, Jimmy frantically began searching through the shelves before stopping and grabbing a white bottle.

"What's that?" Crash asked, cocking his head to the side slightly.

"Bleach." Jimmy said, quickly unscrewing the cap a bit too fast to even really control his hands properly. The lid to the bottle spun off, flipping through the air and bouncing a little on the ground. Deciding that wasn't the most important thing at the moment, Jimmy grabbed Ricky's left arm by the bicep, probably a bit too harshly.

"Wait what are you-" Ricky cut himself off with a scream as Jimmy poured the entire contents of the bottle out on Ricky's still bleeding bite.

"What's going on?" The Commander asked panicked as he, and the two brothers, appeared in the doorway.

"Jimmy put bleach on it." Crash answered over Ricky's screaming.

"Jeez, what?" Eaglebones looked over to the drummer with worry painted on his features.

"Bleach kills almost everything." Jimmy replied, still shaken up as he watched the youngest Aquabat hold the wound with a tight grip.

"Now its gonna kill me!" Ricky hissed through gritted teeth.

Eagleclaw frowned and then exited the room quickly. He knew that there was no way to stop the infection, not even cutting off the injured limb appeared to work. The virus immediately got into the bloodstream, and then it was game over. No stopping it. He wasn't surprised the others didn't seem to know that, after all they had started out a group of five and they still had all five...for now at least.

He saw Crash's shot gun by the door, and grabbed it in his claw. He made a grim face as he cocked it and headed back towards the robot's lab.

Jimmy looked up, eyes widened when he saw the gun in the man's hand. "What are you doing?"

Eagleclaw didn't respond and just walked over to Ricky, harshly grabbing his right arm and yanking him to a standing position.

"Wh-" Everyone watched in complete horror as Eagleclaw then put the barrel of the gun against Ricky's temple.

"Stop it!" Jimmy screamed, putting his hands on the gun and pushing it down to face the floor instead. "What do you think you're doing?!"

"He's infected!" Claw screeched, angry that he had been stopped. "You can't seriously be saying we're letting him live."

"That's exactly what were saying!" The Commander hissed back at the other man.

"No way, that's a bad idea."

"Can I have a say in this?" Ricky asked shakily.

"No." Came the response from the three arguing men.

Ricky frowned and just looked up at Crash.

"He got bit!" Eagleclaw screeched, pointing at Ricky with a talon and a deep frown basically engraved into his facial features.

"I put bleach on it!" Jimmy screamed back.

"Do you really think that will work?" Eagleclaw sounded more offended than angry, as if somehow just that thought was an insult to him.

The Commander pushed his way in between the two men, and then shoved them both in opposite directions. "That's enough!" He said angrily. "Maybe it won't work, but even if it doesn't we are NOT just going to shoot him!"

Eagleclaw dropped the gun to the floor, and glared at the Commander. "Then you're just gonna let him turn?"

"I-" Ricky tried to interrupt the men, only to be cut off by crash.

"Sh." The large man patted the smaller man's shoulder. "We shouldn't get involved right this second." He whispered to his friend, knowing that everyone in the room was pretty agitated. Plus, the one that liked him the least kind of had a gun.

Ricky didn't try to say anything after that, and just frowned at the conflict going on in front of them.

"We're not killing Ricky!" Jimmy shouted shrill-y at the bird-like man.

"Then he's going to kill us instead!"

"When the time comes we'll do what we need to do."

Eagleclaw's sneer grew. "Are you sure you can do that?"

No one answered, and the room grew silent very quickly.

Eagleclaw grinned. "That's what I thought." He raised the gun once more, putting it right back against Ricky's face.  
"Come on Lassie, I think we need to put you down."

The runner took a step back, mortified that they had returned back to this point and that this time no one was saying a word about it. He looked around the room, maintaining the scared expression, and looked like he was silently begging for help.

"Eagleclaw, stop." Eaglebones finally spoke up, probably for the first time in this whole encounter.

The clawed man let the gun droop a bit, and looked over to his little brother with an angry expression. "Oh gosh, Eaglebones not you too." His tone was one made of both betrayal, and actual shock.

"Ricky saved his life." Eaglebones clenched his fists. "He's like a little brother to all of use. If there's even a chance he could live, then we aren't going to kill him."

Eagleclaw snorted. "But there's not-"

"You don't know that." The long haired man responded firmly.

"Neither do you." Eagleclaw hissed.

"We aren't doing anything about this until we have a sure answer." Jimmy interjected.

Eagleclaw's face went slack as he looked at the others in complete shock. Then, his mouth twisted once more into an enraged scow. "Fine." He dropped the gun to the floor with a loud clatter, and tossed his hands into the air. Ricky visibly relaxed.

"I'm out." Eagleclaw said, turning on his heels. "Have fun with your zombie friend." He began to briskly walking out of the lab.

Everyone sat in still stunned silence, and listened to the distant and muffled noise of the battletram's exit being slammed shut.

"Come on..." Jimmy mumbled softly towards the drummer. "Let's get you cleaned up..." Ricky nodded, and let Jimmy lead him out of the lab and to the bathroom.

The Commander and Crash both looked over to Eaglebones with furrowed brows and concerned looks.

"Eaglebones, you okay?" The singer asked, walking over to the thinner man and placing a hand on his shoulder in an attempt to comfort him at least a little.

"Yeah." Eaglebones brushed the other man's hand off and looked away. "My brother is such a jerk..." He mumbled.

"Yeah, he really is." Crash agreed, earning a dirty look from the Commander.

"I think I'm gonna go to bed now. Or something..." The guitar player slowly walked out, muttering a quiet 'goodnight' as he walked into the hall.

Crash picked the shotgun off the ground, and the Commander realized his hands were shaking.

"He's gonna be alright."

Crash smiled warmly over to the singer, and then left without another word.

Sighing, MCBC looked over to the gross liquid spilled on the floor made of a combination of blood and bleach.

"He's gonna be fine." He repeated to himself quietly and exited the lab as well, clicking the lights off on his way out.

. . .

Everyone had been pretty tired after the whole mall situation that day, so nearly everyone went to bed immediately. Jimmy decided that instead of just sitting around all night, he would try and get some travelling done, though he wasn't sure why. Eagleclaw's comments from earlier still hung around in his head, the things about how going anywhere was useless, and the more recent ones about Ricky.

The robot sighed, switching the battletram into autopilot mode and rubbing his temples, though there was no real reason for that action. It was more of a habit he supposed, something he might have just picked up from seeing humans do it. Either way it didn't really matter and that wasn't the most important thing to him at this time.

Jimmy jolted up when he heard the door to the battletram's cockpit open, and he quickly turned to see who it was that had entered.

"Ricky?" He asked the runner as the boy sat down in the passenger seat next to him.

"Hi." Ricky greeted, sounding pretty exhausted.

"I thought you were asleep." He paused, eyes flickering down to the bandage on the other's shoulder. Then, trying to pretend he hadn't look at it, turned his eyes back to the road as discretely as possible.

"Nah."

"Why aren't you?" Jimmy looked back over to the boy like an over protective mother or anything close to that.

The drummer shrugged in response. "I dunno..." He sighed. "Guess I'm not tired?" He smiled sheepishly over to the robot, who frowned in disbelief.

"You don't have to lie..." Jimmy looked over his friend in worry. "Do you not feel good?"

Ricky's smile faded ever so slightly. "No it's not that..." He paused, clicking his tongue and looking out the window as if the answer would appear out there for him. "I guess I'm just...scared" He rubbed his arms nervously, looking back over to Jimmy.

"You're gonna be okay." Jimmy realized there were tears welling up in Ricky's eyes. The robot held out his arm, and was glad when the drummer grabbed his hand.

"I don't want to die." Ricky was full on sobbing now, tears running down his face as he began blubbering pathetically. It hurt Jimmy to see him like this, and know there was nothing he could do for him. The younger boy was usually pretty proud, and he had never seen him acting like this before. The robot squeezed his hand lightly, and just sat in silence letting the other get as much of the negative feelings out of his system as was possible by crying.

"J-Jimmy" Ricky sobbed out. "I'm so scared. I don't want..." He made a strange choking sound, and Jimmy knew if he had a heart it would already be broken by this point. "I don't want to become like one of them!"

"We won't let that happen, I promise."

Ricky looked at the robot, sniffling pathetically. He squeezed Jimmy's hand this time, causing the other to smile softly as he watched the smaller man calm down just a little more.

"Maybe you should get some sleep?" Jimmy offered.

"No thanks." Ricky pulled back the hand he had been grabbing Jimmy with, and rubbed his face on the sleeve of his rash guard. "I think I just want to sit here with you for a little bit." He mumbled quieter, sinking deeper into the seat.

Jimmy's smile warmed more, and he put both hands back on the steering wheel; taking control of their vehicle once more. "That's fine with me."

"Thanks, Jimmy." Ricky murmured even quieter, and one quick look in his direction made Jimmy realize that the other Aquabat had actually fallen asleep in the seat.

Not having the heart to disturb him, Jimmy just let the boy sleep as he continued to drive down the old and long time abandoned road.

If there was a list of positive things to come from the apocalypse, no traffic would certainly be on there.


	6. Chapter 6

Much to Jimmy's dismay, this seemed to quickly become a pattern for Ricky. Instead of going to bed with the rest of the Aquabats he would stay at the robot's side instead. And most nights that he DID go to his actual bed, he seemed to have nightmares and would end up staying away with Jimmy. More often than not, Ricky would sleep everywhere except for his bunk.

Nobody was quite sure if that was the reason for the runner's swiftly declining, health or if it was instead the fact that he had gotten bit by a zombie. Either way, with each passing day Ricky began looking more and more pale and sickly. It was hard on everyone, watching their fitness friend slowly change into someone who barely had the strength to do anything.

They all also noticed he ate less, and at each meal he would only take a few bites and then proclaim he wasn't hungry. They all had a gnawing suspicion he was eating less for other reasons. It appeared that each of the other Aquabats had come to the mutual conclusion that Ricky wasn't eating simply because he thought he would be wasting food since he practically had a death clock slowly counting down each day.

The bite itself had ended up looking rather disgusting. The teeth marks themselves had formed a completely gross looking scabs, and the areas around them had turned into a dark bruise with colors like sickly yellow, the color o popped blood vessels, and the standard purple tinting of the skin that usually came from a bruise. Unfortunately, there was never any type of band-aid or anything else covering the bite thanks to the rash guard being ripped there, so much to everyone's dismay it was always visible. Jimmy had suggested plenty of things to put over the wound, but Ricky was quick to shoot them all down with any number of excuses; as if he had planned them all before hand in case someone were to mention the idea (though it didn't make any sense to them as to why their friend would do something like that).

Physically Ricky had actually changed a lot in the short time since he had been bit, but almost all the time he still acted like the same happy, ridiculous teenager they had always known him as. That was practically a godsend after everything else had changed so much. It was just comforting to have him still seem like the same person, even if by now he barely looked like it.

"Do you guys know what's next week?" Ricky asked with a huge grin on his face as he walked into the room where the rest of the group was hanging out in.

It seemed a little trivial that any of them would bother to know or remember what the date was considering the circumstances, but Jimmy had a built in clock that prevented him from ever not knowing. He usually shared this with any of them if they asked, or if the date was important. It seemed a bit weird, and they were aware of that fact as well, but it made things seem a bit more normal; and normal was good.

Currently, it was nearing the end of December, and since they were aware of this fact everyone knew exactly why Ricky was bringing up the date.

"No, why?" The Commander teased, looking over to Ricky like he was a child who was pretending to be innocent after getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Ricky rolled his eyes at that comment, knowing the other man was just messing around with him. "I think we should do something special for Christmas!"

"Like what?" Eaglebones asked, kind of reminding everyone they were in a bit of a pinch considering that basically no one was left alive in the continental U.S.A, or any of the rest of north and south America for that fact.

"Oh." Ricky's grin faltered just a bit for a moment. "Good point..." He muttered, obviously a bit discouraged by the other man's point.

"We can still get a tree and stuff!" Crash blurted out, re-energizing the drummer.

"Yeah!" He was practically bouncing, and it was the happiest anyone had seen him since he got bit. "Jimmy, can we get a tree?" The runner was smiling very large, and his eyes were seeming beginning to sparkle.

Jimmy glanced over to the Commander, who caught his eyes and then nodded enthusiastically. "I think we could work something out." The robot grinned back at the younger man.

Ricky's smile just grew even larger, a feat no one had expected to even be possible, and he pumped a fist into the air with excitement. "We have so much we need to do!" Ricky looked around the room frantically. "We need to decorate. Where are we gonna get a tree? Or presents?"

Ricky had always loved Christmas for as long as any of them had known him, and along with the gift giving and any other festive treats; it seemed like the boy's reactions to the holiday were a tradition itself. He got like this every year, and each time he tried his best to make sure everyone knew just how special Christmas was to him, and every year he did his best to make the Aquabats love the holiday as much as he did (though they all had their doubts on if that was even possible).

"Crash!" The large man looked over from where he sat on the couch, cocking his head to the side at his friend who was jogging in place excitedly. "Help me make something to use as wrapping paper!" Ricky seemed more than confident that somehow he would be able to get everyone at least one present that year.

"Alright." Crash agreed, smiling and pushing himself into a standing position. He walked over to the doorway where Ricky stood and let the drummer quickly grab a hold of his hand.

"Let's go! Christmas is almost here!" Ricky blubbered, barely coherent at this point. He quickly zipped out of the room with the bass player following close behind him.

Noticing how sickly Ricky had looked, the Commander turned over to Jimmy with a somber expression. "He doesn't have much time left, does he?" The singer asked quietly.

Jimmy shook his head no. Eaglebones, who had been sitting on the ground with his guitar, quickly got up to leave; obviously made both sad and uncomfortable by the direction the conversation had gone to so quickly.

"Do you think he'll make it to Christmas?"

"I don't know." Jimmy sighed and closed his eyes. "But I hope so."

The Commander hummed quietly. "I hope so too..."

Unsurprisingly, nearly all of the following week was sent preparing for the nearing holiday. Ricky's condition didn't seem to get worse per-say, but it certainly wasn't getting better either. He was tired most of the time now, and he practically looked like hell frozen over. But, on the bright side, it seemed like time passed even faster when they were working on Christmas stuff anyway. And much to the Aquabats delight, Ricky was still with them the day before Christmas eve.

Usually the days around Christmas were filled with the group enjoying drinking some eggnog. Unfortunately, since the world as they knew it had ended in October, they didn't really have access to the yule tide beverage. And, even if they had actually managed to somehow get a hold of some, it would have in all likely hood already been spoiled (or maybe they would have already drank it all. Each of the Aquabats actually loved eggnog, so the latter was the more likely option in this case.)

On the night of Christmas eve's...eve, while passing through a small town, Ricky came up with a genius idea.

It was roughly midnight, and Ricky and the robot were the only two still awake; sitting in the cockpit and driving as their habit had become.

"Jimmy, look! It's a dollar store."

Jimmy raised a brow, slowing down and glancing over to the runner. "Yes?"

"Can we stop? Please?" Ricky begged, even going as far as to hold his hands together in front of his chest making a puppy-dog pout face as Crash had demonstrated what seemed like so long ago.

"Why?" The robot asked, stunned. He had stopped the battletram completely now, and looked over to the drummer with a confused expression; not following the other's train of thought.

Ricky rolled his eyes as if Jimmy was stupid for not understanding. "It's almost Christmas. Presents."

"Oh." Jimmy scanned the area around the battletram, just checking to see if there was any zombies nearby (not that it mattered much when Ricky was already infected).

"So?" Ricky grinned over at the other. "Can we go in?"

"Yeah." Jimmy agreed quickly before moving the vehicle once more; maneuvering slowly and carefully into the deserted parking lot of the relatively small store. "Though I don't know if this place will have anything good for presents, but it won't hurt to look I'm sure."

Ricky shrugged, unbuckling his seat belt. "Guess we're about to find out."

Jimmy nodded in agreement and then followed the other out of the battletram and out into the open night. A thin layer of snow covered the ground and crunched under their feet with each step.

"Hey look at that-" Ricky pointed excitedly to the building. "It looks like no ones broken in there or anything!"

Jimmy looked at the store and realized the younger boy was right; the windows and glass door were perfectly intact. He quietly wondered if maybe that meant the door was unlocked or someone had gotten in through the back.

Ricky jogged up the the door, and frowned when it opened with no resistance. "Well, I guess that means someones probably already gone through here."

"Probably looking for food though, not Christmas presents." Jimmy offered happily to the other.

"Huh- I guess you have a point!" Ricky was grinning from ear to ear again. It was pretty hard to upset him so close to his favorite holiday after all.

The runner hopped in the store and quickly set about collecting things that he thought would be okay as last second presents. Jimmy stepped inside slower, and took his time looking around. He was reminded just how long they'd been alone when he realized half the store was taken up by Halloween related things.

They didn't stay in the small dollar store very long; seeing as how fast Ricky had been moving through the isles Jimmy wasn't surprised at all when they were in and out in less than twenty minutes. Ricky had bagged everything himself (considering how there wasn't anyone else to do it for them) and refused to let Jimmy see anything that he had grabbed.

Normally that wouldn't be much of a problem, but Jimmy had seen the other grab a pen and write something down on what he assumed had been paper, and that was enough to peak his interest and curiosity. He didn't ask about it though.

On the morning of Christmas eve itself, Ricky began his every year routine of waking people up early for even the day before the actual holiday. This was just another one of his quirks that the band had learned to deal with eventually over time.

Jimmy and Ricky (who had not slept at all, an awful habit that only seemed to get worse with each passing night) eagerly woke up all of their friends as early as they had been allowed to do.

"Don't even think of waking me up before ten." The Commander had once warned then quite a while ago. "I need beauty sleep too."

This was a command they rather reluctantly agreed to, and Ricky always seemed more upset by it than anyone else.

That morning the duo awoke the rest of the band by loudly banging on things (Jimmy had a pan and a spoon, Ricky was beating rhythmically on the walls and beds) and yelling "Merry Christmas!'

The Commander grumbled once he had been woken up, rolling over in his bunk and whining quietly. "What time is it?"

Ricky and Jimmy turned to one another with noticeably large grins. "10:01."

The singer glared at the pair and slid out of bed with even more quit and angry grumbling.

Eaglebones threw his blanket to the side and let it drop to the floor. He stretched while yawning, then gently ran his fingers through his hair lazily. He didn't like to be woken up early, but at least he was more quiet about it than the Commander was.

Crash on the other hand eagerly hopped out of his bed, kind of getting his foot tangled in the blanket and stumbling slightly. In the crook of his arm he tightly held his signature Aquabats teddy bear. Unlike Eaglebones and the Commander, Crash wasn't entirely unpleasant in the mornings. He never woke up as early or as quickly as Ricky, but once he was up he was up and pretty okay with it.

Eaglebones shuffled to the kitchen slowly, yawning multiple times during the short journey.

"I wish we had coffee." He mumbled to himself before turning on the faucet and gently splashing himself in the face with cold water.

"Me too." The Commander said as he entered the room after him. He sighed and leaned against the counter, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as best he could.

Jimmy joined the two of them in the small room, and just kind of stood around watching them.

Ricky, who was very eager about what day it was, seemed just a bit off. After leaving the bedroom he made a beeline for the couch and sat down, staring at his hands and then looking up to the tree and presents underneath. It was pretty obvious something was troubling him, but that was pretty expected from someone who was probably going to die any day now.

Crash followed the young boy and sat next to him, looking over the presents.

"Jeez, that's a lot more than I remembered..." The larger man said half in real confusion and shock, the other half just wanting to start a conversation with Ricky.

"Yeah." The drummer was beaming proudly. "Jimmy helped me get more stuff for everyone last night." Crash looked at him questioningly. "There was a dollar store in the last town. He agreed to let me go in there and get everyone a few more presents." Ricky elaborated.

"Oh." Crash looked over the pile of neatly wrapped gifts. Everyone had gotten one another a few presents, but as always Ricky seemed to go over the top with it.

"I was really hoping somehow we could get some cookies, but..." The drummer shrugged. "I guess most of this stuff is still okay! I mean, we have each other so that's what really makes Christmas special."

Crash grinned, glad to see that Ricky managed to cheer himself up before he got too sad or anything. "Yeah." He agreed. Both of the men shared some pretty similar views, so it wasn't exactly weird they'd agree on that.

Soon, the other three joined them. Eaglebones' hair was now pulled back into the messy ponytail he had begun to wear ever since this whole mess happened two months ago.

The Commander sat on the end of the couch with Jimmy standing next to him, and Eaglebones sat on the other side of Ricky.

"So." Eaglebones speech still sounded slurred and heavy with sleep. "What now?"

"Uhm..." Ricky looked over to the robot.

"Actually," Jimmy began. "I think Ricky said there was something he wanted to do today...?" The robot looked over to the drummer as if making sure what he said was right. Ricky nodded quickly in response.

"Not now though. I just want to spend some time with you guys for a while before we do that!" Ricky smiled at the others, and just like before Crash had a weird feeling about it. As if the boy was hiding something from them. The large frowned, and decided it'd be best to ask him about it later.

"Alright." The Commander sounded a bit more awake than before, but actually sounded more tired than even Eaglebones did. "So what are we gonna do?"

Ricky shrugged. "I dunno. But it's Christmas-"

"Eve." Eaglebones added quickly.

"Well it's Christmas for me. And I was kind of hoping maybe you guys would suggest stuff? After all, I plan to ask for a pretty big favor later so I guess until then everyone else should come up with the things to do."

"Why can't we do this tomorrow?" The Commander yawned.

Ricky bit the inside of his cheek quietly, and Crash stared at the boy curiously. "Just...because." The drummer answered finally. Everyone glanced over to him and then to each other, wondering what was going on.

Jimmy frowned. He had a bad feeling about this.

. . .

Just like Ricky had suggested, the guys hung out all day. Even when they weren't doing anything special they still just sat around in the same room and talked. All in all it turned out to be a pretty good day, and four of the five Aquabats expected Christmas to be even better. Unfortunately, the one that didn't was the one who loved Christmas the most.

The later the day seemed to go on, the more fidgety Ricky became. Crash and Jimmy were sure they were the only ones to notice, and because of this they looked at each other nervously in discomfort every so often. They were both visibly worried, and it seemed each time Ricky caught on to that the more he tried to avoid looking at them. Honestly, he was kind of acting like a dog who had done something wrong and was getting scolded. He looked guilty, and neither of them could figure out why.

As well as that happening, the later the day went on the more the Aquabats questioned what it was Ricky wanted to do.

"Is it a gift?" The Commander asked impatiently. "Do we get some super rad gift a day early or something?"

Ricky shook his head in response to the others questioning. "No it's..nothing like that."

"Then what is it?"

The drummer rolled his eyes. "Wait and find out."

The Commander frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. He sunk deeper into his seat and looked away from the drummer.

Crash couldn't help but notice just how uncomfortable Ricky looked, and set his hand on the drummer's shoulder. The larger man was actually pretty surprised when Ricky shrugged off his hand and moved away to the other side of the room. Crash looked over to the robot in shock. Jimmy, who had been watching the whole time, returned Crash's befuddled and just frankly uncomfortable gaze.

"That's fine with me." Eaglebones said, having not seen the entire exchange that just went on right next to him.

"Hmph." The singer grunted in response.

Ricky fidgeted quietly on the other side of the room, and soon enough even the less perceptive Commander caught onto the fact that something was wrong. All the Aquabats looked among themselves, wondering what they could do to help the other man.

"Hey, uh-"

"We should go outside." Jimmy suggested, hoping maybe somehow that could help make everyone less.. whatever it was they currently were. Plus, there was quite a bit of snow on the ground. Snow as always a fun thing for everyone.

"Sounds like a good idea to me!" The Commander was quick to agree. The others nodded in no time, leaving everyone incredibly enthusiastic. Except for the drummer himself, for who this was mainly for to begin with.

Quickly, all of the group made their way to their shared bedroom and retrieved their winter coats from their personal lockers. Once they got them on Crash, Eaglebones , and the Commander quickly made their way out of the battletram with more enthusiasm than most people would think possible. Jimmy looked to the drummer, gently placing a hand on his shoulder.

"Ricky, are you okay?" The robot asked, his face painted with worry as he looked over to his friend.

Ricky smiled sheepishly up at the other. "Yeah..."

Jimmy frowned at that answer, unconvinced by both the words themselves and the reaction. "Ricky..." He began quieter, his eyes softening until he realized the runner was beginning to look even more uncomfortable than before. "Never mind." The robot muttered, looking away. Ricky seemed a bit more comfortable now that the other had dropped it, and the robot just sighed at this. He wanted the other to tell the truth, but Jimmy knew it was better to just not bring it up again.

The duo shortly joined the rest of the Aquabats outside, seeing the other three men were in the midst of what looked to be a very serious snowball fight.

"Ricky!" Crash called over to the shortest Aquabat, waving his arms over his head excitedly. "Come be on my team!" A snowball hit the bass player square in the chest, but he was still grinning at his younger friend.

"That's not fair!" Eaglebones shouted back to Crash.

"I like the idea of three against two." The Commander grinned.

Ricky smiled as well, bending over and quickly rolling up a nicely sized snowball. He made a fart noise with his mouth in the direction of the Commander and Eaglebones, and then threw the snowball. It hit Eaglebones square in the side of the head, getting bits of snow caught in the other man's long hair.

"This means war!" The Commander exclaimed loudly. "Robot, come over here!"

Jimmy looked over to the drummer, who had already ran over to Crash and was standing behind hi,. The robot, deciding that two-vs-three was going to be okay at least in this circumstance, jogged over to Eaglebones and the Commander.

"Get ready to lose!" The singer called to the other two on the opposite side.

"Right back at you!" Ricky taunted in return, grinning over to Crash.

The whole thing went about how you would imagine a snowball fight to go. Nothing super spectacular, one person threw a ball made of snow. Another person dodged said ball of snow. Rinse and repeat until someone got hit, and then continue the process.

Near the end, Ricky had somehow found himself sitting atop Crash's shoulders, still hurdling snowballs blindly towards the other three. Or, in the approximate direction of the other three. He wasn't too sure, he was too busy closing his eyes to check.

"Jimmy, let me on your shoulders!" The Commander said, basically clawing and scrambling to try and get atop of the robot.

"Commander- no!" Jimmy flailed, trying to stop the other Aquabat from getting on him, though to no real avail.

Eaglebones snickered as he watched, and soon Crash and Ricky were pretty interested in the sight as well. Ricky looked down, grinning mischievously at the larger man. Crash, who still had one snowball in his hand, returned the grin up at the drummer and handed him the white and cold projectile.

"Bombs away!" Ricky shouted, tossing the snowball and hitting the Commander right in the side of his head.

"Hey!" The singer shouted, pausing mid-awkward movement. He had managed to force down Jimmy's head and had both hands holding it down relatively low. One of his legs was hanging in mid air right over the robot's neck.

"Can I stand now?" Jimmy asked rather impatiently. This was an experience he hadn't exactly signed up for (or even expected for that matter) and the sooner it was over the better he'd feel.

"No! We're in the midst of a war!" The Commander shouted in a rather silly tone for the second time that night. Then, there was a distant roar. Everyone stopped.

"Oh no." Jimmy whispered completely mortified. He could hear the others holding their breath as if that would make the incoming infected suddenly stop.

"I think we should get out of here." Eaglebones whispered. The sound was getting louder, and therefore the zombies were getting closer. Jimmy was standing straight up now, and Ricky had managed to get down off the other man as quietly and as fast as possible.

Unfortunately, it seemed they hadn't moved fast enough.

"Incoming!" Eaglebones screaming, pointing to more than a handful of zombies running at full speed towards the group of five.

"This is bad!" Jimmy frantically looked towards the other men, not surprised to see that none of them had brought their weapons.

"I think if we run to the battletram we can make it in time!" The Commander looked at the quickly approaching infected in a panic. "But we have to move! NOW!"

Each of them broke into a sprint, with Ricky oddly enough in the back. Luckily for them, they hadn't gone very far from the battletram so it wouldn't take a super long time to get back to it. Unfortunately, the zombies were also close and fast.

Eaglebones, who had been in the front, managed to make it to the battletram and threw the door open. He hopped inside.

"Come on!" He yelled in a panic, gesturing inside wildly.

The next three hopped on with no problem, not even getting close to the zombies they had been running from. Ricky on the other hand, who Jimmy noted was going a bit slower than he should have been, was just barely at the door when the infected caught up.

Ricky suddenly screamed in pain, barely halfway through the battletram's door.

Crash grabbed the boy's hand, tugging him inside roughly. Eaglebones quickly slammed the door closed as soon as the drummer was safely inside. The guitarist pressed himself against the metal barrier, and looked down at the runner.

Ricky was hissing through his gritted teeth, leaning against the wall with his leg stretched out in front of him, taking up all the space from wall to wall.

"Okay." Jimmy pulled up the other's pants leg gingerly. Ricky hissed again, tossing his head back and letting it hit the wall with a quiet thudding noise. The four men who had been looking at the others leg grimaced, and there was at least one groan of horror.

Ricky peeked open an eye, panting uncomfortably from the pain as tears welled up in his eyes. He looked down and gasped quietly at how awful it looked. "Oh gosh..." He said, voice barely above a whisper.

Unlike the first bite, this one wasn't just small teeth shaped wounds. This time, maybe because of how he was pulled away or for some other reason, there was actually a sizable chunk of meat taken out of his calf.

"Oh." Jimmy winced at the wound, then looked up at Ricky's face. He frowned in worry, and began to think of what they could do now.

Crash looked up to his friends face, and saw just how much pain Ricky appeared to be in. "D-does it hurt?" He asked rather stupidly.

"Mmmm..." Ricky hummed, unable to get his tongue to work properly enough for him to speak.

There was banging against the side of the battletram, infected groaning and trying to find a way to force themselves in. They were hitting the door hard enough to and Eaglebones jerking forward with each loud bang.

"Uh- guys-" He forced out, his voice jerking a bit with his body. "I think we should- probably move-"

Jimmy, who didn't want to see his friend in pain anymore, quickly volunteered to drive and then dashed out of the room before anyone could object.

"Crash," Eaglebones decided since the robot had ran out that he should probably become the one to try and make the situation better. "can you go find something to help stop the bleeding?"

Crash looked down at Ricky, then to his wound. He nibbled his lip nervously, then quickly ran out to do what the smaller man had asked of him.

The Commander, not sure what to do or say, bent down and leaned on one knee. He gently grabbed a hold of the runner's hand and smiled at the younger boy as warmly as he could. "You're gonna be okay."

Ricky looked over to the singer and tried to smile, though it turned out more like some weird grimace. "Haha, yeah." He sounded the opposite of convinced.

Not knowing what to do, the Commander just stayed quiet and continued to hold Ricky's hand weakly in his grip.

Crash soon returned with a bundle full of napkins, and handed them to Eaglebones. The guitar player frowned, and then crouched next to Ricky as well.

"This is probably gonna hurt-" He tried to warn the other.

"Oh, great." Ricky responded, voice laced with sarcasm. Crash wrapped an arm around the runner's waist on the opposite side of the Commander.

Eaglebones took the top napkin and flattened it out a bit. "Sorry about this." He said wincing as he pushed the paper into Ricky's bleeding wound.

The runner screamed, even more tears welling up into his eyes and beginning to escape down his cheeks. The Commander tightened his grip on the others hand, and Crash nervously rubbed circles into his side.

Eaglebones frowned as he pulled the first napkin away. It was now coated in a decent amount of blood and it was all damp and stained red. He looked back down the the bite on Ricky's calf. "We're gonna need to disinfect it somehow..."

"Oh, God, please no." Ricky moaned out in pain. The other three men all seemed to bite their lips in unison. "Please not that again." Ricky begged.

"I-" Eaglebones paused.

"It's gonna help you." Crash offered.

"No. No no no no." Ricky repeated defiantly. "There's nothing you can do to help me." He added slightly quieter.

"Ricky-! Don't say that!" The Commander sounded both hurt and stunned as if what the boy said had been a personal insult against him.

Ricky grunted as Eaglebones pressed a second napkin into the bite, effectively stopping the drummer from actually giving any real response to the man.

Soon they all felt the slight shift in driving, telling them that Jimmy had turned on autopilot mode.

Sure enough, in only a few seconds the robot appeared back in sight. "How's it going?" He asked, trying to make the situation seem as normal as possible.

"Not good." Eaglebones answered as he looked down at the blood stained napkin in his hand. He frowned, tossing it on top of the other one. He grabbed a third, and Ricky stopped him from putting it on the wound.

"Please stop."

Everyone looked at the boy in shock and confusion.

"Just...please." Ricky sounded like he was upset, and they all stayed silent and waited for him to continue to talk. "I don't want to admit it but... Eagleclaw was right."

Everyone's confusion just grew.

"I mean-" Ricky sighed. "I'm gonna turn into one of those...things unless we do something about it." Ricky was full blown crying now, more than a few tears rolling down his face from more than just pain. "I don't want to be one of them." It took them all a moment, but then Jimmy finally realized what the younger boy was saying.

"Ricky, no!" The robot said. "We're not just going to.. to let you die!"

"Jimmy, please!" Ricky was crying more now, and his voice cracked pitifully. "I- I-" He stuttered, trying his hardest to make the words form and come out of his mouth correctly. "I want to die!" He was finally able to get it out with a sob.

The room dead silent except for Ricky's small crying noises.

"Please kill me." The runner begged, his voice strained and wavering. "Please, I don't want to become one of them!" He continued to beg, his sentences becoming less and less coherent with each word. His body shook from his crying.

"Ricky..." Eaglebones felt a lump in his throat, and he was at a loss for words.

"We can save you..." Crash's voice came out unsteady and weaker than he had intended, and soon enough the large man had tears forming in his eyes as well. "You don't have to die, we can save you!"

Ricky hiccuped, still sobbing and repeating 'please kill me' over and over again, though by now it didn't even sound like words. It was more like a strange background noise, meaningless static like birds chirping or cicadas making noise in the distance.

The Commander squeezed the other's hand even more, wishing there was some way they could help their younger companion. "Don't talk like that..." The singer muttered quietly, trying to help calm the runner down.

"I'm going to die-" Ricky took in a deep breath and continued to sob uncontrollably. "please let me die!"

"Ricky-" Jimmy put his hand's on the runner's shoulders and tried to calm him down. Ricky was the most controlled of the group, in both emotions and other miscellaneous physical ways, so none of them exactly understood what it was they were supposed to do (especially when the mental breakdown was as bad and as justified as this one was).

"I don't want this! I can't take it anymore!" Ricky hid his face in his hands and sobbed.

"You have us." Crash rubbed more circles into Ricky's rib cage.

"It's better this way." Ricky muttered quietly into his palms.

"We'll do whatever it takes to keep you safe." Crash was frantic by now, panicked as he worried about what was going to happen to his best friend. "We can save you! You don't have to do this-" The large man's voice cracked and he just stared at Ricky with pleading eyes.

"Please-" Ricky croaked, pulling his uninjured leg close to his body. "Please just stop the battletram." He looked to Jimmy with the same pleading eyes Crash was trying to use on him. "Please."

Everyone was surprised when Jimmy stood and nodded at the command.

"Jimmy- what are you doing?!" The Commander's eyes widened in horror as Jimmy began walking towards the cockpit.

"Jimmy stop!" Eaglebones shouted, standing on his feet quickly and reaching to grab the robot's arm. "Don't do that!"

The robot shook his head, quickly leaving the hall and walking into the front of the battletram.

Crash looked to the Commander in despair. "Please, make him stop! Don't let him- we can't!" His eyes flickered to Ricky, who seemed much calmer than he had been before now that it seemed like someone was listening to what he was saying.

They all felt the battletram slowly roll to a stop, and horror was relevant on each of their faces; except for Ricky who looked almost... happy, or at least more at ease now.

"Jimmy!" The Commander shrieked as loud as he could. "Don't do this!"

Crash's hands were shaking, and soon Jimmy appeared back in view of the group.

"Help me get him outside." The robot said simply.

"N-no!" Crash was crying even more now, basically a sobbing mess. "I won't let you do this!"

"Crash-" Ricky frowned slightly at his best friend. "Please..." He said it so quietly this time, and even though they were right next to one another it was barely audible. The bass player looked down and stared at the other's expression. It was painful just to look at, and he suddenly realized why Jimmy was agreeing to do all of this. Of course no one had wanted this, but soon Crash came to the realization this was better than any of the alternatives.

"Okay." The large Aquabat said, standing up slowly. He reached his hand out to the boy on the ground and Ricky smiled up at him.

"Crash!?" Eaglebones sounded even more mortified now than he had before, staring wide eyes as Crash pulled Ricky up into a standing position and let the drummer lean on him.

Jimmy quickly rushed to the other side and helped keep the runner upright.

The Commander frantically looked between the three of them, scared of what was going on and what was going to happen.

The robot managed to open the door with his free hand, and as slowly and carefully as they could manage the trio stepped out into the cold and snow once more.

"Please stop." Eaglebones whispered with shaking hands and wide eyes.

Ricky leaned over a bit towards Jimmy and said something quietly to the other man. The robot nodded and carefully removed his arm from around Ricky.

"Hold on a second." Jimmy said, quickly jogging back inside the battletram.

The Commander and Eaglebones moved more hesitantly outside, coming up to the two already standing in the snow.

They turned and looked to see Jimmy come back with a shotgun in hand.

"Oh-" Eaglebones' eyes widened, and he felt like he was about to throw up right there.

Crash looked afraid once again, something about the reality being so close reminding him of what it was they were about to do.

"Can you...let me down?" Ricky asked in a scratchy voice and looking up to the man holding him up.

"Oh, uh, sure..." Crash gently helped Ricky get on his knees, the younger man shivering slightly in the cold and from the snow.

"We're not seriously doing this are we?" Eaglebones seemed to be the only one protesting now, still looking horrified by the reality around him. "He's not some sick dog, we can't just put him down like one!"

"This is what I want." Ricky said quietly.

"This isn't right." Eaglebones replied as quick as humanely possible.

"Please."

"How is this...going down?" The Commander asked, his voice nervous and uncomfortable with a low volume no one was quite familiar with or used to in the slightest.

"I want Crash to do it." Ricky answered.

Crash's eyes widened. "Please- I can't-" Crash took an instinctive step back and his eyes widened in horror.

"You're my best friend. I..." Ricky looked at the ground, ashamed of himself for asking so much of his friend. "I need you to do it."

"I can't." Crash was crying once again, and he suddenly regretted assisting Jimmy in getting the other outside.

"Crash-"

"You can do it." Jimmy offered words of encouragement, holding the gun out to Crash. The large man stared at it as if it were a live and poisonous snake.

With a shaky hand, Crash finally gathered enough courage to take the gun from the robot's hand. He held it tight, gripping it and holding it close to his chest.

"Please hurry." Ricky was cringing from a combination of both the pain and the cold.

Crash felt like the world was getting darker and it was harder for him to breathe. His arms were shaking wildly, and closed his eyes as he pointed it towards Ricky.

Jimmy gently put is hand on the shotgun, moving it a bit to where it was more accurately pointing towards the drummer's head.

Ricky felt his hands shake, and he closed his eyes tightly. "I love you guys." He said softly, looking back up to the four men around him. "I'm so sorry this is happening."

Everyone was only noise for a moment was Crash prepping the gun to fire, his hands shaking hard enough that this seemingly simple task became like solving the world's hardest puzzle.

"Crash?"

The bass player exhaled a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. He was hoping that maybe Ricky was about to call the whole thing off, but it quickly became very clear that wasn't even close to being the case.

"Yeah?" Crash asked in a wobbly voice, looking at his friend with sad eyes.

"Merry Christmas."


	7. Chapter 7

After returning to the battletram, the four remaining Aquabats didn't exactly feel like talking anymore. For a while, they all just sat in the cockpit together, Jimmy sitting in the driver's seat with his grip tightly on the key for more than a few minutes. He hadn't turned it yet, and the battletram just stayed off as they sat in silence.

It felt wrong to even try and say anything, and all of them had found more than a few tears in their eyes at this point.

Eaglebones couldn't help but blame himself for what had happened. In a way; he kind of was responsible, but he knew it wasn't his fault. All he could think of was how maybe just maybe if he had moved faster, or been paying more attention, or ANYTHING that this would never have happened.

Jimmy blamed himself as well. He thought that is he had let them do what they wanted sooner maybe this wouldn't have happened. Or maybe it would have happened sooner, who knows. He just quietly thought of how if he had just said no to letting them come, if he had just never mentioned the mall in the first place, if he had done something different there would still be five of them and they'd all be excited for Christmas still, and everything would be normal again.

Crash blamed himself the most, for he had been the one to pull the trigger. Crash knew that even though he hadn't been the one at fault for Ricky getting bit (he didn't blame anyone else either) it was his fault the drummer was dead. Because he had been the one to kill him, and he had been the one that helped get him outside to be killed like a lamb to the slaughter. He sniffled pathetically to himself.

It took a few more minutes of them sitting in utter silence and no movement until they finally decided to just call it quits for the night.

"I'm going to bed." The Commander had been the one to say it, his voice quiet and almost distant sounding. Everyone nodded in solemn agreement, and one by one they all unbuckled their seat belts and headed off to their shared room.

Jimmy finally released the key from his grip and leaned back in his seat. The robot stared up at the dark ceiling of the battletram and wondered why everything had to turn out this way.

. . .

Crash found himself sitting in some strange city on a park bench. It was dark and cold. He looked down and realized he was in the regular Aquabat attire instead of the one they switched to for winter. He frowned, standing and looking around the city streets.

He didn't recognize this place, it was dark in the middle of the night. The bench he had come to on was right next to the empty sidewalk, and beside him was a streetlight that wasn't even on. It was snowing, and it took him a moment to realize that there were Christmas decorations in the windows of darkened shops across the street from him.

Still confused, Crash did a slow 360 spin to see if he could recognize anything around him, only to confirm he had no idea where he was at. He was beginning to become nervous, now looking a bit more frantically and beginning to stray from the bench which he came from.

Then he noticed, there in the distance, was a figure. The first sign of life he had seen since waking up. Excited by this development, he began to run towards it.

"Hey!" He called out to the shadow. "Hello! Where am I?" He shouted as he ran towards it, trying his best to get the persons attention.

The figure turned around, and Crash felt his heart stop as he skidded to a stop as fast as possible. He felt a lump well in his throat, because he knew exactly who that person was, and that's what scared him.

"R-Ricky!" He stumbled over his own feet as he ran as fast as was possible for him, frantically trying to reach his friend as tears began to form.

But yet something was very strange about this, despite the obvious problem, because it seemed that no matter how much Crash ran towards him; the other didn't seem to get any closer.

"Ricky!" He screamed once again, this time sounding more confused and distressed then as excited as he had before. He continued to run, quickly exhausting himself quickly. Fortunately for the large man, it seemed now he was finally making real progress towards the other man, and soon enough they were face to face.

Ricky said nothing, just looked up to the larger man with his mouth closed in a straight line. His eyes seemed to lack the sparkle they once had, but Crash told himself it was because of how dark it was.

"I thought-" Crash sobbed, then grabbed the smaller man and pulled him into a tight hug. He looked down at his friend, and then realized his arms were empty.

"Wh-" Crash looked around in frantic horror, then spotted a figure laying on the ground in the nearby snow covered grass. "Ricky?"

He moved forward more hesitant this time, slowly as if unsure of his movements. Upon getting closer he realized that, again, the figure was Ricky. However unlike last time, instead of being a clean and healthy Ricky Fitness it was now the same Ricky he had last seen. Crash tried not to gag as he stepped back, his mind flooded with what he had seen once again.

Ricky lay on the ground unmoving, a halo made of blood already gathered and pooled in the originally white snow around his head. Crash quickly looked away from it, and he was crying again.

"Crash..." The large man practically jumped out of his skin as he heard the weak calling of his name. He didn't know what was worse; that a corpse was calling his name or that he was about to reply to his dead friend.

"Yeah...?"

"Why did you kill me?"

Crash's blood got as cold as ice and his eyes widened in horror. He watched as slowly the corpse on the ground sat up.

"Why?" Ricky's mouth wasn't moving even though Crash knew he was the one talking.

"I-"

"Why did you kill me?" He repeated.

"You wanted me to-" Crash's voice cracked and he instinctively took a step back. "You didn't want to become a zombie! I only did it because you wanted me to!"

"You killed me." Came the simple response.

"I had no choice-"

"I thought we were friends." The figure that looked like Ricky began to jerkily stand up, its movements uneven. Crash felt like hundreds of people were staring at him, but the corpse didn't even have eyes. Instead there was hallow black holes on his face, and every vein was visible on his practically paper-like skin.

"You made me!" Crash howled, falling to his knees.

"Why did you let me die?"

"I never wanted to- I didn't mean to-" Crash was wailing, grabbing his head and curling up into a ball on the cold ground.

"You killed me!" The phantom accused with a shriek, and Crash looked up at it. It was right above him, so close with outstretched arms. The large man's heart began to race and he felt like the world was crushing him. It was as if all the air was leaving his lungs, and he was absolutely terrified. He closed his eyes tightly and a quiet squeak escaped his mouth. And then he jolted awake.

Crash was breathing heavily, eyes frantically searching for some kind of light in the small bedroom. It took him a moment to gather his wits and remember where he even was. He pulled his bear closer to his chest and laid back down, trying to remember what the nightmare was even about.

He was about to wake up the drummer above him; and then he realized why his face felt wet. He remembered everything all at once and clasped a hand over his mouth. Crash wheezed into his palm pathetically; remembering that the other boy was dead.

"Crash?" He heard a sleepy murmur, and looked over to see that Eaglebones had awoken from his slumber.

"I'm okay." Crash responded much quieter than he had originally intended.

Eaglebones paused for a moment, then at least pretended to believe the reply he got. The guitarist snuggled back into his blankets and went to sleep again almost immediately.

Unfortunately for Crash, he couldn't stop thinking of the awful thing he had done to the person who he had been the closest to.

. . .

No one was energized that morning, and instead the silence from the night before still seemed to have a hold of each of them. The three humans were surprised to find Jimmy was recharging already by the time they were awake, something he never did after the virus outbreak had begun. The original tradition now felt a bit weird to all of them, though no one voiced that opinion aloud.

When Jimmy finally woke up, he told everyone he had a plan.

"What is it exactly?" The Commander sounded less than interested or convinced.

"Well," The robot looked just a little nervous. "I think we can find a cure."

Everyones eyes widened.

"A..cure?" Eaglebones voiced all of their confusion.

"Yes, I believe that, given the resources, I could maybe fin d a way to cure all these..."

"Zombies." The Commander finished for him.

"Yeah."

"So, what kind of stuff do we need?" Crash asked. He was all for finding a cure, because even if things were never the same that would still be much better than..whatever they were currently dealing with. "Can we even get it anywhere now?" His voice changed to a worried tone.

"Typical medical equipment...under normal circumstances it shouldn't be hard to find but, this isn't really typical is it...?" Jimmy sounded as though they hadn't been dealing with stuff like this for over two months.

"A hospital." Eaglebones pointed out. "Couldn't we find the stuff at a hospital?"

"Probably..." The robot paused. "But that sounds more dangerous than any other place I can think of."

"I'm sure it'll be fine." The Commander said dismissively.

"Right..." Jimmy sighed. "But, we shouldn't worry about that now."

"Why?"

"It IS still Christmas." Everyone looked down to the floor. Christmas had been Ricky's favorite holiday, probably one of his favorite things ever. It just didn't seem right celebrating it without him.

Noticing everyone's upset reactions, Jimmy tried to smile. "It's what he would have wanted. He put a lot of work in it for us, we should at least check it all out."

"Jimmy's right." Crash was quick to agree. Ricky had put a lot of effort into getting them gifts, and it only seemed appropriate they should at least look at them. Besides, what else could they do? Throw the gifts away? Just the thought of that would have been enough to make Ricky cringe.

As it turned out, most of the gifts were just things like toys and sunglasses the younger man had ended up getting from the dollar store. None of it was exactly perfect, but given the circumstances no one could blame him. The gifts they had gotten each other were pretty lame as well considering what they had to work with.

Once they had all unwrapped each of their gifts, all that was left under the tree were presents that had been for the runner. Those, and an envelope with all their names on it from the deceased Ricky himself.

Crash had been the one to pick it up, and he felt his hands begin to shake as he looked down at it. He handed the paper envelope to the Commander.

"Should I..read it?" The singer asked the others, not sure if they were all ready for something this big.

"Go ahead." Jimmy said.

"Yeah, let's see what it says..." Eaglebones replied next.

Crash just nodded silently.

"'Dear guys,'" The Commander began to read aloud. "'I'm really sorry I couldn't stay with you for Christmas.'" A stunned silence fell over the room as each of them came to the same awful realization.

"He...planned this?" The guitar player's voice was shaky, and he felt as though he were about to begin to cry again.

"He wrote this two nights ago." Jimmy said in horror.

Crash was still silent, thinking back to the day before and how Ricky said there was something he wanted to do. Was him being shot the thing he had planned?

"'I'm sorry for what I made you do, but I know what was going to happen to me. I know you'll understand. I love you guys, please stay safe. Love, Ricky. P.S. I hope Christmas is great even without me there.'" The singer finished, setting the piece of paper down on his lap.

The room was silent as everyone just let the letter sink in. It was horrible to think that no matter what happened or didn't happen, Ricky had planned on dying the night before. The second bite had just ended up being a convenient excuse, and honestly it was hard to imagine what would have happened if he hadn't been bit. How could he have expected them to kill him for seemingly no reason? Granted he had been bitten before, there had honestly been no rush. Besides, they all seemed to have started to believe maybe the bleach had killed the infection and he was going to end up fine anyway.

"He wrote that two nights ago..." Jimmy repeated, putting his head in his hands. "I was there when..." He trailed off. The robot knew there was no reason to blame himself.

"I don't think there was anything we could have done to stop him..." Eaglebones said quietly. "If he wrote the note...his mind must have been made up."

"He's right. There's nothing we could have done." Crash agreed quietly.

"Come on Jimmy, let's just try to..." The Commander sighed. "Enjoy the rest of Christmas."

"Yeah..." The robot agreed. His voice would probably have cracked at that word had it been able to.

"That's the spirit."

No one exactly sounded 'ecstatic' or anything close to happy, but they still tried their hardest to enjoy the holiday no matter how hard it sounded.

Soon Christmas day was over, and everyone went to sleep early in preparation for the big plans they had in the morning.

. . .

As it turns out, the hospital they arrived at didn't look too dangerous. Well, actually the outside was quite a bit like the mall had been; dirty and barren. So, overall, they couldn't really tell if it was going to be safe inside.

One by one each of the Aquabats got off the battletram and looked up at the dilapidated building.

"I think I should go inside first..." Jimmy muttered.

"And leave us outside? No thanks robot." The Commander crossed his arms over his chest and looked away indignantly. "We're coming in and that's final."

Jimmy frowned and rolled his eyes. Honestly, he was kind of grateful his friends were so stubborn since he hadn't wanted to go in there on his own in the first place.

"Well..." The Commander rhythmically tapped his relatively small gun on his thigh. "I guess we should go in and look for this 'cure'."

"Right." Jimmy didn't bother correcting the other by saying it wasn't the cure they were looking for; but the means for a cure. He figured it was kind of pointless anyway. In the robot's hands he held Ricky's old crowbar tightly. They didn't want to waste the weapon, and also it just seemed plain wrong to leave it somewhere. Plus it was just convenient to give the robot some form of melee weapon better than his fists would be. Just in case, for some reason, his lasers didn't work and they needed a back up plan. Not likely, but it was better to be safe.

Jimmy took a deep breath, and took the first step towards the buildings doors. The others followed his simple movement as if they were all his shadow.

"You guys ready?" Jimmy mumbled as he reached the door with shaky hands.

"Yeah." They all nodded feverishly despite being behind the robot and the latter not actually being able to see the motion.

"Here goes nothing." He said quietly, pushing the door open with his metal hands.

Inside was a mess. There was blood smeared over a majority of the once white walls, and everything in the hospital seemed to have been flipped over at some point. Wheelchairs and potted plants lay on their sides, papers scattered across the floor like over sized confetti. There were even a few corpses here and there, and the group was understandably wary of them.

"This is worse than the mall." Eaglebones mused.

He was right, because most of the stuff here looked broken and covered with enough blood to repel almost anyone. A portion of the floor had glass shards, both from the shattered ceramic pots of the plants and from the broken windows and doors scattered throughout the rest of the building.

There was a barely audible shuffling noise from upstairs, alerting them to the fact they may not have been as alone as they had hoped. Crash cocked his shotgun and everyone turned to him as if waiting for something.

"What?" The large man asked in total confusion, obviously not understanding the looks he was getting.

"We thought you were gonna say a cool catchphrase." The Commander answered.

"What?" Crash repeated, just as confused.

"Y'know," It was Eaglebones speaking this time. "like in action movies. They dramatically cock their gun or whatever and say 'I'll be back' or something."

"Oh." Crash frowned and looked at his gun. "Uh... let's go kill some zombies?" He grinned sheepishly. Everyone laughed.

"Good enough." The Commander patted Crash's shoulder.

Jimmy walked to the reception desk, carefully avoiding stepping on the broken glass. For some odd reason, he was more paranoid that the glass shards crunching would bring more zombies than their talking and laughing would. He grabbed a map of the hospital and a pen from the desk.

"Alright, we're right here..." He said, putting a finger on the dirty paper. "Although..." He paused, furrowing his brow and looking over the map closer. "I have no idea where we're going."

The Commander frowned. "What are we looking for exactly?"

"Oh." Jimmy paused once more. "Uhm, just." He looked at the paper harder, squinting a little. "Things to test blood. Maybe some needles and syringes. Probably some band-aids-"

"I want some Super-Magic-Power-Man band-aids!" Crash said excitedly.

Jimmy smiled at that comment and nodded. "If they have any..."

"Don't they have testing rooms or something at hospitals?" Eaglebones inquired.

"Maybe." The Commander said, taking the map from the robot's hands. "But I don't see anything like that on this map."

Crash looked a little worried. "Does that mean this place doesn't have anything we need?"

"It probably does." Jimmy took the map back from the Commander with a dirty look. "We should check in most of the rooms too I guess, just in case."

Eaglebones craned his neck rather awkwardly to get a better look at the paper. He scrunched up his nose. "I don't know Jimmy, this place is pretty big." He looked up at the robot warily. "We know we have visitors. It could- will- be pretty dangerous after all."

The Commander nodded in agreement. "He has a point Jimmy. We should just go to rooms that look important." He pointed to a tiny square on the map. "Like there."

Jimmy looked at the place the other pointed and raised his eyebrow. "The... bathroom? " The Commander grinned like a guilty child.

"I have to go pee."

Jimmy rolled his eyes and sighed. "I told you to go to the bathroom before we left." The Commander shrugged at Jimmy's motherly tone. The robot just frowned.

"We might as well, Jimmy." Ealebones said, quickly diffusing any possibly arising situation. "I mean that's a direction to start isn't it?" The guitarist DID have a point, Jimmy couldn't deny that.

The robot sighed again, giving in. "Okay, but next time just save us the trouble and go beforehand."

The Commander shrugged once more. "Maybe. Who knows Jimmy, when nature calls it just calls. That's something a robot like you could never understand." Jimmy elbowed him in the awm. "Hey- I'm just saying!" The Commander defended himself.

"Well just don't." The robot hissed back in response to the other. The Commander just grinned back at him rather goofy like.

"Let's get going." Eaglebones interjected once more, the rest of the group turning their attention to him. "This place makes me uncomfortable." He crinkled his nose up in distaste.

"Me too." Crash agreed pathetically like a small child. The largest Aquabat had always kind of been childish, and a huge scaredy cat. Unfortunately, it seemed now that Ricky was gone that trait was just more relevant. It was pretty sad honestly, and the other three knew there was nothing they could do about it. It seemed that there was a unanimous hope between them that, with time, he'd get better. None of them were really expecting that to be true however. It was just wishful thinking at its finest.

So, thanks to the Commander, the group of four set off on their way to the men's bathroom. It was kind of ridiculous actually.

Luckily, the bathroom was relatively close to the reception area they had walked into upon first entering the hospital. It was just a little ways down the hallway to their right.

Unfortunately however, it seemed the deeper they went into the hospital the dirtier it had become. There was more blood than ever now, and even some severed limbs and other body parts were strewn about the halls like a bit too macabre Halloween decorations. On the bright side, there was less paper and glass now.

"There it is." Jimmy gestured to the men's room once they had arrived at it. "Be quick, please."

The Commander stepped forward and frowned. "Y'know," He scrunched up his nose in both distaste and disgust. "I've always hated public restrooms." He grumbled as he pushed the door open slowly and carefully. "Crash, come with me and make sure there's no zombies there to try and sneak attack me." Cash grinned. "I don't want to die with my pants down..."

"You got it Commander." The bass player agreed more than happily. After all, sitting outside hadn't sounded very thrilling. Then again this didn't either, but the phrasing made it sound kind cool or at least just a little bit entertaining. Either way, Crash followed the singer int the bathroom regardless of if he was excited to or not.

They both stepped into the near pitch black rest-room.

"Aw nuts, why couldn't they have put a window in here or something? Are they that afraid of someone trying to peak in here? Well I got news for them, that door isn't very preventative. Of anything. Honestly."

Crash snickered. Then they heard a noise, sounding like something was banging from inside one of the stalls. Immediately both men froze and went dead silent. There was a groan, and more banging. More frantic and frustrated this time.

"I think we should get out of here." The Commander said to his friend in a low whisper. "It's too dark for you to try and shoot it or anything isn't it?"

Crash nodded, then remembered the other man couldn't see his gesture. He smacked himself inwardly, then answered in a more noticeable fashion. "Yeah. Getting out of here sounds like a good idea. Maybe Jimmy can take care of it for us."

"I like the way you think." Even if they were whispering quietly, the zombie in some undetermined location just groaned and banged on the walls louder and faster. It was obviously not pleased about the way things had worked out for him. First people to come into the room in God knows how long and he couldn't even get out or close enough to try biting them. If those things felt (and the all doubted they could) this one would feel pretty sad or angry. Maybe even both.

The Commander turned to try and open the door only to realize he had no idea where the handle was.

"Oh great." He muttered under his breath, feeling around the unfamiliar wood blindly to find the handle. "Hey- Crash, buddy, help me out here." The banging sounded pretty violent at this point, and they both just wanted out of this small room as fast as possible. If the thing did come out, they were in trouble. It's pretty hard to shoot accurately at a thing you cant even see, especially when it would probably be in a very close proximity to one of your friends. All in all, this situation was was turning into a pretty awful one incredibly quickly. And to think this as only happening because the Commander wouldn't listen to Jimmy! (Actually, this was a pretty normal occurrence even before the whole zombie apocalypse thing, so it wasn't THAT strange of a thought honestly. It was actually rather humorous in some kind of weird way. )

Too stupid to step back and call for help, the two men just blindly ran their hands across the door in a frantic search for some kind of way to open it. The banding on the door now became something that sounded like a shoulder being rammed against the stall door. The foce was strong enough to shake the neighboring cubicles, and it was more than a little obvious the hinges would soon break or give way. It was just a matter of time. It seemed this simple trip to the bathroom had quickly turned into a race of 'who can get their door open first'.

"Ah-ha!" The Commander exclaimed in triumph. He was no longer trying to keep his voice down as he hands wrapped around the cool metal of the handle. "Got it!" He grinned.

As soon as the singer pulled the door open however, there was a loud noise of their 'fried' escaping his prison as well.

"Oh jeez!" Crash hissed through his teeth as the monster roared loudly and sprinted full speed at the duo.

"Oh s-" The zombie tackled the Commander, causing them to both hit the dirty floor on the opposite side of the door.

Jimmy and Eaglebones both jumped back as their friend hit the ground with a dull thud.

"Get this thing off of me!" The Commander screeched in horror, barely holding the infected away from him with hos hand firmly gripping the lower part of its jaw.

"What-" The guitar player still seemed to not have fully grasped what was happening right in front of him.

"I think it'd be dangerous if we stepped in like this-" Jimmy quickly looked over the man on the floor. "Can you reach your gun?"

The Commander grimaced with the effort at holding the creature on top of him at bay with one hand, but he somehow managed to reach down to his belt and pull out his small handgun. He hastily brought the barrel of the revolver into the monsters mouth and pulled the trigger.

It's body collapsed like a sack of flower on the man and he grimaced. "Oh gross!" He hissed. "Get it off!"

Jimmy and Crash quickly moved to help get the now unmoving corpse off of the Commander.

"Feel free to step in any time..." The Commander grumbled as he took Jimmy's hand and pulled himself up.

"You looked like you had it. Didn't want to get in your way or anything." Eaglebones shrugged, and the Commander shot him a dirty look in response to that statement.

"Thanks." He replied sarcastically.

"Okay," Jimmy stepped between the two of them and pulled out the hospital map. "where to now?"

"Well..." They all turned their attention to the Commander, who looked a bit uncharacteristically sheepish. "I still haven't actually peed."

Everyone groaned.


	8. Chapter 8

As it turns out, the first floor of the run-down hospital didn't really have much of use. They had found a box or two of bandages, but surprisingly (or unsurprisingly) enough it seemed someone had looked through the building before they had.

"Alright." The robot sounded less than thrilled about his next statement. "I think we're going to have to go to the next floor..."

Everyone looked up at the ceiling above them. there was still a barely audible shuffling and walking noise coming from the upstairs, and they were less than eager to find out what it was.

"Oh boy." Eaglebones frowned. "I can't wait to check that out." He said with his voice dripping with sarcasm.

Crash squirmed a bit. "I just hope there's not a whole lot... The large man said more to himself than anyone else.

"I wouldn't hold your breath..." Jimmy sighed. His robot senses were a bit more acute than the others were, and he could hear more than just afew of them up there. "I think you should all go back to the battletram."

"Oh come on Jimmy, you can't expect us to just leave now. We're all in this together." The Commander grinned, slapping the robot on the back playfully.

Jimmy sighed once again, as if it was quickly becoming a habit for him, but with friends like his who could blame him? "That's a terrible idea."

"Course it is!" The Commander beamed happily. "But we're staying anyway! Get used to it, robot."

Jimmy frowned and rolled his eyes as the other two men quickly, and loudly, agreed with the singer. "You're all so stubborn."

"Yeah." Crash was grinning. "We are."

Eaglebones was smiling as well, and soon Jimmy found their happy expressions to be contagious enough to make him crack a smile as well. Maybe not as big as theirs, but it was definitely there.

"See, that's the spirit!" The Commander cheered on. "Now let's get going, don't wanna waste all the daylight." Considering their only light WAS the sun peaking through the dirty glass of the widows, he was right.

The group of four headed the direction that the map told them would lead them to the stairs.

Jimmy frowned upon coming to a realization, the robot turning the large paper over to it's back. "We have a problem." The others quickly turned their attention over to him.

"What is it?" Crash asked, cocking his head to the side in curiosity at what the other had said.

"We're not going to have a map of the upstairs."

"Wait, what?" The Commander took the map from Jimmy again. "There's only the first floor here!"

Everyone paused for a second, than the Commander began to laugh. The other three men turned their attention to him with mixed expressions.

"Looks like we're gonna have to have to wing it boys."

Eaglebones frowned. "Don't sing about it this time, please."

The singer shrugged and looked at the long haired man with a huge grin. "We'll see . Sometimes I just get the urge to-"

"Can we keep moving now?" Jimmy asked, effectively cutting the Commander off from anything he was about to do. Crash nodded in agreement, and Eaglebones couldn't help but smile as the Commander began to pout and almost silently grumble under his breath, probably because the robot had stopped him from having fun.

Once they had reached the stairs, which were unfortunately in the opposite direction they had originally been going, they looked up and realized there was their first sight of infected in the hospital right there at the top of the stairs.

"Oh, great." The Commander grumbled under his breath more to himself. "Can't wait to see what's up there."

Jimmy looked at his friends pretty nervously. "Are you all sure you don't want to go back and wait in the battletram? There's probably more up there than we thought." Despite being as quiet as possible for them, the infected were still alerted quickly and a few had already begun dashing at them quickly with loud roars.

"Too late now." The Commander grinned, tightening his grip on the golf club in his hand, prepping to swing at any of the zombies who tried to get too close to them. Crash readied his shotgun.

Only about three of the infected had even made it to the stairs before they were gunned down by the robot and the bass player. The infected crumpled quickly with each shot, falling to the ground under them and toppling down the stairs like nothing more than dolls.

"Ugh." Eaglebones groaned with a disgusted expression and closed eyes. "That's.."

"Gross." Crash finished for the other Aquabat.

The unmoving corpses lay across the stairwell like abandoned toys, taking up quite a bit of space for there only being the three of them.

"Hold on." Jimmy jogged up a few of the stairs. "Move away!" He called down to the others, waving his arm as if to tell them what he meant. He grabbed one of the corpses by the back of it's tattered shirt. The men did as they had been instructed, each of them stepping away from the open doorway of the stairs.

"Here it comes!" The robot called down at them once again, haphazardly tossing down the body of the zombie as if it were trash (which it kind of was to be honest).

The bodies collapsed on each other as Jimmy threw them down, making a bigger pile and a bigger mess at the bottom of the stairs.

Crash grabbed the top infected corpse and tossed it behind him. He repeated this until the path way they needed was clear for them.

"Alright." Jimmy said down to them from the top of the stairs. "It's clear up here!"

Eaglebones eyes flickered back over to the new pile of dead infected, worried they might get up and start moving again. He quickly was the first one to get on the stairs and basically ran up to the top. He stood next to the robot hastily and began to look around as well.

"Me next!" The Commander grinned speedily and dashed up the stairs. Crash didn't complain and moved swiftly right after the singer, close behind him all the way up. They both made it to the top of the stairs only seconds after one another.

It wasn't like the stairs had been long or very high, but yet upon reaching the top of them the Commander seemed a bit out of breath. He leaned on his knees and panted just a little bit as if that had been some kind of serious exercise.

"So," Crash patted the singer's back rather sympathetically. "which way are we going, Jimmy?"

The robot looked down each hallway and hummed softly. "Well..."

"Left."

"Right."

The Commander and Eaglebones looked at one another after coming to the realization that they had both answered with conflicting answers in unison with one another.

"Left." The Commander repeated.

"Right." Eaglebones said again with a furrowed brow.

"Left." The singer's tone was getting harsher and more stern.

"Right." Eaglebones was beginning to look more angry, or perhaps it was a look of frustration. Either way, it was fairly obvious he was anything but pleased.

"Left." The Commander was displaying the same unhappy emotion as the guitar player.

"Right!"

"Left!"

"Hey!" Jimmy cut them off with a huff, agitated by the whole mess of things that were starting. "We're going straight." The robot pointed forward, in the direction Crash had already began to walk down.

Eaglebones and the Commander's faces both lit up red like a tomato, embarrassed that they had started a fight over such a trivial matter. Well they weren't that embarrassed. Actually, that was pretty normal for them. If there was ever a conflict between any of the men, it was usually over something as dumb as this. It's just they way they were.

As they went from room to room, they heard noises of the infected that were throughout the rest of the second floor. It was unnerving to say the least, but they seemed fortunate enough to not run into too many of the things. Jimmy appeared to be permanently on edge here though.

After an hour or so of searching with no real luck the Commander finally spoke up with an idea.

"We should split up." Everyone looked at the singer as if he had grown a second head or something like that. "I mean, I know it sounds dumb, but come on it will be so much faster! We can cover twice the area we are now!"

"I don't thing that's such a good idea Commander." Jimmy pointed out with a rather large frown on his face. "Only one or two people could easily get over run by a reasonably sized horde of those things. You should know that by now." The robot was quick to point out.

"Well." The Commander clicked his tongue and crossed his arms over his chest like a defiant teenager. "We each have weapons and we know how to use them. As long as we look out for our partner's backs I'm sure everything will be just fine."

"It makes sense to me." Eaglebones agreed halfheartedly with a large shrug. "I just want to get out of here as fast as possible. If splitting up will get us out sooner, then I'm all for it."

"I'm with Jimmy!" Crash called out, raising his hand happily as he took a quick side step closer to the robot.

"Works for me." The Commander nodded happily at the fact he had gotten his way after all, not that he expected differently.

Jimmy continued to frown. "This is a very bad idea." He repeated once again.

"Maybe," The Commander played the whole situation off as if it were nothing to him and that it was just a thing happening that he had no control over (despite it being his idea in the first place). "but you got outvoted!" He pointed it out with a playful grin. "Besides, is four really that much different than two?"

"Yes." The robot grumbled back at the singer rather begrudgingly.

The Commander continued to grin as Eaglebones stepped closer to his side.

"The two of us are going right." The Commander told the other duo. "You guys go wherever."

Crash looked at the robot inquisitively. "Which way do you wanna go Jimmy?" He asked with a smile.

"Let's just go to the left." Jimmy answered, his voice incredibly unenthusiastic not that they really expected anything differently from someone who hadn't wanted anything to do with this plan in the first place.

"We should meet down in the room we came in."

"The reception area." Jimmy told the name to the Commander.

"Yeah, that place. The Reception area." The singer agreed dismissively with a wave of his hand in the robot's direction. He and Eaglebones had already begun walking down the hall away from Crash and Jimmy.

"We're going to be here for a while, aren't we Jimmy?" Crash asked the other with a frown and a defeated expression beginning to form on his face.

"Most likely." Jimmy sighed.


	9. Chapter 9

The Commander and Eaglebones always had clashing personalities, one of these reasons probably coming from the fact one of them always seemed to try to be more of a reason than the other. This was obviously a big problem since the Commander more or less just prided himself on his excellent leader instincts and didn't enjoy when someone else tried to take the spotlight from him in that area. Plus, in a way, they were both kind of show offs, and it was hard to show off when everyone else's attention was currently on another show off. The duo were still close friends despite these problems, but that didn't mean their relationship was anything short of rocky.

Both the Commander and Eaglebones stayed relatively quiet as they looked around the old hospital. Bones pushed open a door to one of the many rooms. I had already been partially open a crack, so he was kind of just hoping it was safe inside. Luckily for them, it was as if his prayers were answered. The interior of this room was much like the rest of the dirty building, the only difference here in this room seemed to be the dead body laying face first on the tiled floor.

"Oh gosh..." Eaglebones put his hand over his mouth. It was weird to think that even living in a world like this, with corpses left and right (some even walking!) that not everyone still alive would be used to the sight. It became apparent that no matter how many they'd seen, none of the Aquabats would ever REALLY get used to seeing dead bodies of any kind.

The Commander looked incredibly displeased as soon as he noticed the body, frowning and hesitating in the door way. He acted as if just trying to enter the room would hurt him or something else to that effect.

"Do you want to just move on?" Eaglebones asked the singer, sympathetically looking at the man paused in the hall.

"No." The Commander shook his head. "No." He repeated, gathering his bearings. "Let's check it out in here. I'm sure it'll be fine either way. Who knows, maybe there's something good in here." It was obvious that little pep talk was more for himself than the other.

"Maybe." The long haired man agreed with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm in his voice.

After another moments pause, the Commander finally decided to step over the threshold and stand inside the small room. It actually smelt worse than the rest of the building, and the Commander held his nose as he looked around.

"Ugh." The singer groaned at the smell pathetically. It probably wasn't pleasant in any form of the word, but it also probably wasn't anywhere near as bad as the duo made it seem. To be honest, they were acting like huge drama queens.

"There better be something useful in this place or I'm going to lose it..." Eaglebones said with a disgruntled look on his face.

"Come on Bones, it's not that bad." The Commander grinned.

"Says the one who was just holding his nose." The bird-like man rolled his eyes at the other man. The Commander's grin grew from that comment to one that would usually be seen on a naughty child. He seemed to be enjoying himself.

Eaglebones snorted at him, then walked to the cabinet against the wall on the other side of the room. He carefully stepped over the body on the floor. The guitar played gently tugged open the door to the supply cabinet, making a small disgusted noise when he realized the handle was sticky. His eyes widened suddenly and he jerked his hand away from the handle as if it had just burned him.

"This shouldn't feel that fresh." Eaglebones said aloud in absolute horror.

"Wait- what?" The Commander paused in mid-step over the body on the ground. The long haired man's eyes widened even more as he connected the dots to the mystery.

"Commander- that's not a corpse!" He gasped, and as if on some kind of cue the monster lifted it's ugly head and groaned loudly.

"Jesus-!" The Commander scrambled backwards trying to get away from the zombie and ended up falling backwards on his butt with a dull thud. The singer's jaw went slack as he looked at the infected that was beginning to move once more. The Commander's eyes quickly darted to the open door, where he realized there was more infected out in the hall they had just been in, wandering aimlessly.

"Eaglebones!" The Commander hissed quietly and both the other man and the beast turned their attention to him. "Don't make too much noise!"

"What?" Eaglebones stage whispered back.

"Noise!" The man on the floor hissed at his friend once again.

"...You want me to make noise?"

"No, wait!" It was too late, even if the Commander hand't panicked and screamed at the other, the zombies outside would have been attracted by Eaglebones loudly beginning to stomp his feet and slam the cabinet door repeatedly.

"That's not what I said!"

The guitarist paused his noise-making with a confused face. "Then what DID you say, 'cause that's what I heard."

"I said don't make any noise!" The Commander shouted in frustration, throwing his hands up into the air above his head.

"Oh." Eaglebones was quiet, then looked at all of the zombies that were just standing still and staring at them quietly.

The Commander's eyes wandered in the same way. "Oh." He muttered as well.

The silence lasted for only a second longer before the infected all let out loud noises in sync and ran forward.

. . .

Crash flipped through a medical book he had found on the table. He wasn't reading it, he had no interest in the thing at all honestly, but Jimmy had told him to wait in the small office they had found while the robot went ahead to see if there was any danger.

"Gross." Crash whispered to himself about some of the pictures in the book before he set it back down. It felt like he'd been alone in this room for ages, even if it had been more like two or three minutes since Jimmy had walked away. The large man leaned back and sat on the desk behind him idly. He looked around the room with a childish wonder. It was boring in here, but it seemed so weird to be in someone's private area. At least, Crash thought this might be something like that. He wasn't too sure honestly, and he hadn't asked Jimmy either.

The bass player stayed in the sitting position for about another minute before growing bored. He stood up, wandering aimlessly about the relatively tiny office. It took roughly three more minutes before even this got sufficiently boring as well.

"I'm sure Jimmy's on his way back..." Crash muttered to himself as he played with the corner of a piece of paper hanging off the desk. "He won't mind too much if I meet him halfway." He was trying to convince himself to get the nerve up to leave the room. He didn't want the robot to be mad at him or anything, but God was it boring here with nothing to do. There wasn't even anything good to look at! All the books were either full of too many words, or just had gross pictures Crash had no interest in looking at. He wondered if the doctor who had spent his time here ever even read the things or if he just kept the books around to look smart. The bass player chuckled at that thought, imagining a man going to the store to buy things that would make him look intelligent. Then his thoughts immediately switched over to Jimmy and he couldn't help but laugh at that thought as well, thinking of the robot secretly loving things like picture books and hiding them from everyone else. It made sense, it would explain where he got those weird books like the 'Floating Eye of Death'. Crash shivered at the memory and stepped away from the desk and closer to the exit from his office prison.

Conveniently, once he was honestly considering leaving the room the door swung open with Jimmy on the other side.

"I think I heard Eaglebones and the Commander in trouble." The robot quickly informed his larger friend.

"What?" Crash sounded anxious as he spoke. "Where?!"

"Come on, they're all the way on the other end of this floor. I hope I was wrong, because if they really are in trouble we won't be able to reach them in time to help..."

"Don't talk like that Jimmy." Crash was grinning, trying t be as comforting as possible when he was probably even more worried than Jimmy himself. "Let's go help them out!"

Jimmy just stared at the other man for a moment to gather his thoughts or prepare for what was ahead, and then nodded with a warm smile. "Yeah, good idea."

Crash gently took the robot's hand into his own and lead the other down the hallway in a half jog, half run. Jimmy gave him approximate directions on how to get to where he was pretty sure the other two Aquabats were.

Even though they really HAD been separated by a lot of space, it didn't necessarily take that long to find them once again. Lucky for them though, the Commander and Eaglebones hadn't actually needed their help at all. In fact, they had already cleaned up their situation and everything seemed to be more than okay with them.

"Hey there you two." The Commander greeted them with a grin while he gently rubbed some splatted infected blood off of his cheek. "Find anything?"

"Are you alright?" Jimmy quickly asked, worry dripping from his voice as he ignored the other's question. "Neither of you got bit right? Everyone's fine?"

The Commander continued to grin and Eaglebones cracked a smile at the other's worried nature.

"We're fine."

"Not a scratch on us." The singer beamed, holding his arms out only to have Jimmy instantly grab them and check over for some kind of bad sign. Immediately after he released the Commander's arms he moved over to Eaglebones to do the same.

"Boy, we really can't leave you alone can we robot?" The Commander just kept grinning and then looking over at Crash. "Did you find anything?" He repeated once more.

Crash shook his head no. "Not really. Jimmy says we should try one more floor. He says there should be something around here somewhere."

"I'm not leaving until I find what we came here for." The robot said matter of factly, butting into the other two's conversation. "If you need to go back to the battletram that's fine." He didn't make it sound like it was fine. "But I really need to find something."

The Commander strolled over to Jimmy and put his hand on the other's shoulder. "And we're right here with you. We're gonna find whatever it is you need."

Eaglebones, now pretty uninterested in the topic at hand, walked back over to the supply closet he hadn't had a chance to look in yet. He opened the door, still grossed out a bit by the sticky red blood that coated the handle, and peered inside.

"Hey guys- come quickly!" It didn't seem to matter to him that they were all in the same room, that was usually just his reaction to finding important things.

"What is it Eaglebones?" Jimmy asked, coming up to the slender Aquabats' side.

"Is this anything you needed?" The guitar player was grinning proudly as he stepped aside so everyone else could get a good look at what it was he had just found.

"Yes!" Jimmy's eyes lit up with joy and excitement. He turned to his friend and pulled him into a hug. Eaglebones laughed uncomfortably at how tight the robot was beginning to squeeze, but otherwise didn't react.

"Cool!" Crash grinned as he looked over everything on the wooden shelves.

"Well would you look at that." The Commander crossed his arms with a smile. "And I was about to say we should just get out of this room. Hey, nice job Bones."

"Thank you." Eaglebones bowed playfully.

"Now we just need to get it all back on the battletram." Jimmy turned and looked at the door. "Hold on-" He exited the room without another word.

"What do you think Jimmy needs all this stuff for?" Crash wondered idly, reaching in and gently toying with a box of needles.

The Commander shrugged. "He said something about a cure, didn't he?"

"Yeah?" Eaglebones wasn't sure what that had even meant.

"Maybe he's gonna come up with something. If anyone can do it, it would probably be Jimmy."

The robot returned quickly, holding a large bed sheet in his arms.

"Where'd that come from?" The guitarist asked with a raised eyebrow.

"One of the rooms a few feet down the hall. Now-" Jimmy stepped forward and un-bundled the sheet, holding it out in front of him. "Help me put the stuff in here, I'm going to use this sheet as a sack of sorts."

"That's really smart Jimmy!" Crash complimented the robot excitedly.

"Thank you Crash. Now if you'd all just drop the stuff in the center of this-"

The other three men did as instructed, taking armfuls of the items from the shelves and just dropping them in a small pile on the sheet in the robot's arms. Once they had finished that, Jimmy tied the corners of the sheets up and held the large bundle in front of him against his chest.

"Is that all we need?" The Commander asked impatiently. "I'm ready to get out of this place." He crinkled his nose up as he looked down at one of the dead zombies on the ground.

"Yes, almost." Jimmy set the items down once more and walked over to the shelf. He pulled out one of the left over syringes and a clean needle, leaning over and drawing blood from one of the infected lying on the floor.

"What's that for?" Crash asked, cocking his head and trying to get a better look at what the robot was doing.

"I'm getting a sample of this blood for the infection." Jimmy pulled back the syringe and stood upright once more. He broke the needle off and put it in the back of his belt. Probably not the best string of decisions, but he figured it was going to be alright either way. "I need it to preform some tests." He finished his explaining, then picked up the bundle of supplies once again.

"Oh. Cool." It was more than obvious that Crash actually had no idea of how to react to the information he had just gained.

"Let's get out of here." The Commander more or less commanded with a tap of his foot. The singer was getting impatient.

"Alright, alright." The robot sighed. "Let's go."

The Commander grinned and took the lead of the group, hurrying towards the exit of the building as fast as possible.


	10. Chapter 10

Once they had reached the battletram and gotten safely inside, Jimmy immediately took all of the supplies he had received from the hospital and went to his lab.

The robot untied the corners of the sheet and laid them out on the counter of his lab table. He frowned as he saw some things had been damaged or broken completely, but that was only a few things so there was no major loss. He pulled out the syringe with the infected blood and set it aside carefully. He picked up a new and clean needle and syringe, and exited the lab in a brisk walk. He went into the cockpit where the other Aquabats were sitting around, with Eaglebones driving.

"I need to take a blood sample of one of you if that's alright." He said upon entering the room.

"You can have some of my blood!" Crash offered helpfully with a smile. Jimmy smiled back softly at the larger man, then walked over to him.

"I brought a box of the rainbow band-aids we found. I know it's not Super-Magic-Power-Man, but I hope it's okay."

Crash's grin grew larger. "That's okay Jimmy!" He sounded almost... excited.

"Let me see your arm." The robot instructed, and the bass player did as he was told. Crash held out his large arm and Jimmy carefully pulled up the sleeve of the tight rash guard. It was an unpleasant task, but he got it done all the same. It took less than a minute for him to get the blood he needed and to put the band-aid over the small hole the needle left behind. Crash smiled up at the robot.

"Thank you." Jimmy said. The robot said good byes (as well as good nights) to everyone as he excited the room once more.

"Do you think this stuff can be cured?" Eaglebones asked with a raised eyebrow, turning his attention from the night road to the Commander in the passenger seat next to him.

"I dunno." The singer looked out the window almost wistfully as he leaned his head on his hand. "But I hope so."

"Yeah," The long haired man looked back at the road with a solemn expression. "me too."

Crash was too busy fiddling with his band-aid to join in on the small exchange.

Back in his lab, Jimmy began to examine the infected blood by itself under a microscope. The cells looked dead, but were continuing to move around as if they were alive. The robot frowned, wondering just what kind of virus they were dealing with. He sighed and rubbed a temple after pulling away from the microscope. He had seen this far before, and he still had the same questions. However, now he was lucky enough to watch how the infection spread.

He grabbed the syringe with Crash's blood and pressed a drop out onto a clean slide. He grabbed the other slide that had the infected blood, and let a little drip down onto his friend's.

Deciding the infection probably spread slowly, judging by what had happened to Ricky, he slid the slide under the microscope and decided to begin a preliminary examination. He was astonished to watch the two sets of cells immediately merged.

"What-" The robot realized this meant the infection was much faster acting than he had ever anticipated. He looked back down the microscope and was even more surprised to see Crash's blood appeared to be completely unfazed except for slightly more sluggish movement.

"This can't be right..." Jimmy mumbled to himself, grabbing a new syringe and making his way back to the cockpit hastily.

"Commander." He said as soon as he entered through the doorway.

"What is it robot?"

"Can I have a sample of your blood as well?" Jimmy seemed flustered, and everyone in the room took notice of this.

"What's wrong Jimmy?" Crash sounded uncomfortably at the way the robot was acting.

"Nothing I think. Just- can I please?" He pointed to the Commander's arm.

"Uh, sure. Whatever..." The Commander watched Jimmy move with a confused expression on his face. Jimmy repeated the process of drawing blood even faster than he had the last time, and instead of putting the band-aid on the singer he just tossed the still in-package thing at him and then quickly departed.

"I wonder what that was about..." Eaglebones said to himself as he saw Jimmy disappear from sight before the door had even fully closed.

Jimmy immediately put the Commander's blood on a new slide without the carefulness he had used before. He felt rushed for some strange reason, and he put the infected blood in the other's with shaky hands. He checked over Crash's slide once more, to see no change in results, and then replaced it with the singer's.

He watched the entire process of the infection take place, and even continued to stare after all the blood had become some dark and dead mess. It hadn't taken long until everything in that slide appeared to be infected.

"What's going on..?" He hummed and decided to put more of the infected blood onto Crash's slide, and watched as nothing changed. The bass player's blood just absorbed the stuff as if it were nothing.

"Okay... Okay." The robot pushed himself away from the lab bench and rubbed his temples more. He stopped to think about the whole situation, and quickly came to a realization of what was going on.

"He's immune." Jimmy whispered to himself in shock. His eyes widened as he came to a second more awful conclusion.

Jimmy wasted no time in running back to the cockpit once again.

"Do you need my blood now?" Eaglebones asked in amusement.

"No- I think I know what's going on. With Crash anyway."

"What do you mean?" The Commander turned in his seat to look at the robot with a raised eyebrow.

"Going on with me?" Crash sounded confused as well.

"Yes- I think you're immune to the virus."

Crash's eyes widened. "What? How?"

"Well, I compared your blood to the Commander's, on how the infection works I mean, and even after his blood died yours was still the same. I believe it has something to do with you having super human powers."

A grim silence fell over the room, then...

"Ricky had powers too." Crash said quietly.

Jimmy looked at the floor. "Yes... and the infection spreads so fast there's no way he was seriously affected by the virus. I believe he was immune too."

Everyone went dead silent, and Crash just stared up at the robot in shock and horror.

"Then I..."

"There's no way we could have known." Jimmy tried to soothe the bass player. He reached his hand out to Crash only to have it be smacked away.

"He didn't have to die! He was gonna be fine!" Crash was screaming now.

"Crash-"

"RICKY DIDN'T HAVE TO DIE!"

Everyone went silent, Eaglebones and Jimmy staring at the floor with guilty expressions. The Commander just stared at Crash in disbelief, understanding why the other had burst out like that but still being surprised about it.

"IF YOU WOULD HAVE JUST LOOKED FOR A CURE EARLIER-" Crash had tears in his eyes, and anger plastered across his face. "IT'S YOUR FAULT RICKY'S DEAD!"

Jimmy visibly flinched as if he had been hit or something to that effect. He was used to playful teasing from the others, and had even been able to handle the whole situation before he found the egg with Jimmy Jr. But this... this was different. "Crash- please just-"

"NO!" The huge Aquabat roared, staring at the robot with more hate and anger than anyone had even known Crash was capable of. "Just stop!"

"He was infected- we didn't know he was immune we didn't know he could have lived long enough to even make it to the hospital. We had to-"

"What is wrong with you?" The Commander cut in, looking at Jimmy with a stern frown on his face. No one had ever seen this much rage in the Commander's eyes before, but there was another motion there as well. It looked like betrayal and agony. Maybe this was because the robot would suggest something like that, or because the more he thought about it the more sense it made.

"I just-" Jimmy continued to try and reason with the other man, but it was no use.

"Stop!" Crash cried out again, his hands balled up into fists held at the sides of his head, looking like he was attempting to block out everything Jimmy was trying to say.

Eaglebones mouth was in a thin line as he stayed quiet, but he was obviously disgruntled as well.

The room went silent, the only noise was now coming from Crash as he began to completely break down and sob. The largest Aquabat was never the most strong willed, or in the best control of his emotions so it was no shock that he couldn't handle this situation very well.

The robot stared at his friends, realizing the damage he had just caused. It had barely been two days since Ricky had died, and it was now more than apparent he had made a mistake of bringing it up again. He should have figured as much, but maybe he thought that knowledge would somehow just not hurt them. As if their emotions could be pushed out of the way by facts. It didn't make sense, and now that it was over he wondered why he had done it in the first place when it was so obviously a terrible idea. He frowned, now aware of how much of a mistake he had just made.

"I-" The robot's voice was soft and almost frail sounding. He pointed to the door and mumbled a quiet "I'll leave". It was barely audible over Crash's shouting and anguished screams.

Jimmy sighed as he reached his lab, leaning against the closed door and he just sort of allowed himself to slide down the metal of the door slightly. He felt awful, he should have been able to guess Crash was still that upset over practically being forced to kill his best friend. Jimmy buried his face in his hands and moaned into his metal palms. Now his friends were going to be upset and hate him, and there was no one the robot could blame but himself. Honestly it was a stupid decision to say practically everything he told them, and now he was going to have to suffer the consequences.

The Commander tried his hardest to calm down the sobbing Crash, though nothing he did seemed to be working.

"It's my fault Rickys dead!" He cried out, rubbing his tear stained face on the thin fabric that made up the sleeve of his rash guard. The bass player was absolutely distraught and wasn't sure of what he could do now besides get emotional.

"Come on big guy." The singer tried to soothe the larger man. "It's going to be okay." That line probably wasn't the best choice of words for this situation, but he really didn't know what else he could say.

Eaglebones pressed his lips into a thinner line and he stayed silent, just staring almost blankly at the road ahead of them. The guitar player wasn't sure what they could do at this point. His eyes flickered down to the gas meter and his straight lined mouth quickly turned to a frown.

"I know this isn't the best time," His tone was bland. "but we're almost out of gas."

This statement startled the Commander, who knew they had been on their last can. "Oh-" He paused, looking at the larger man in the seat next to him. "Someone needs to go tell Jimmy or something." He muttered bitterly.

"One more problem." Eaglebones spoke slowly and deliberately as if speaking so emotionless was a hard task got him. "The check engine light is on too."

The Commander looked over to the floor on his opposite side, his frown twisting into a worried grimace. "Now that... that might become a problem."

Even though Crash had calmed down vastly, everyone was still rather worked up by the experience enough to not want to go talk to their robot friend.

Rather than go and ask to stop for more gas, Eaglebones turned the key in the ignition and shut off the battletram for the night.

"We can worry about it tomorrow." The long haired man muttered under his breath.

"Sounds good to me." The Commander agreed quietly with a small shrug. He turned his attention back over to the larger man at his side. "Come on big guy, let's get you to bed okay?" Crash sniveled pathetically and nodded without another word, letting the Commander take him by the hand and slowly lead him to their shared bedroom. He stayed quiet the whole walk.

Eaglebones stayed behind for a moment, leaning his head against the steering wheel and thinking over everything that had happened the past few months. He wondered what they did to deserve this.


	11. Chapter 11

After the argument the night before, Jimmy had almost immediately plugged himself into the charging station for the night. So, when he awoke in the morning hours later without a full battery he was actually pretty puzzled and confused. He was sure that could only mean one thing the battletram was running out of both gas and energy. This thought scared the robot, since gas was getting harder and harder to find this could only mean bad news for both him and the rest of his friends.

The robot frowned and exited his lab. He was actually surprised to find that, no, it wasn't the next morning as he had initially thought and was instead still in the middle of the night.

"What's going on?" Jimmy mumbled to himself softly as he made his way up to the cockpit. He was worried about what would happen if they did actually run out of gas. They had no idea how close the nearest gas station even was, or if they had enough gas to get remotely close to reaching it! Even if they did find one, there was no promise it would have any gas. The more time that went on, the harder it was to find fuel.

Jimmy silently hoped that maybe somehow, the machine to charge him had just malfunctioned, and that they were still fine with supplies. If that was the case, he made a mental note to go on another gas run as soon as possible just because of the scare he was having right now.

The robot walked into the room at the front of the battletram and sat in his normal spot in the driver's seat. He turned the key over in the ignition and turned the vehicle on. It rumbled to life, and he looked down at the gas meter only to see that his initial worry and assumption had been correct.

"Oh no." He gasped to himself. He wondered if the others were aware of the lack of fuel. He could only assume that the answer to that question was yes. A large part of him wanted to panic a little, but he was able to ignore that and rather easily kept himself as calm as possible for a situation like this. He sighed and held his head in his hands once more, sufficiently fed up with the whole ordeal already even if it was a pretty new problem. He sat there in silence before there came the tell-tale noise of the door being opened. The robot turned, and saw the one who came in was none other than the bass player.

"Crash?"

The large man didn't say anything, just walked silently over to the passenger seat.

"...Do you really think I'm immune to all this?" Crash asked in a quiet voice.

Jimmy hesitated. He actually still wasn't 100% sure, but most of the signs DID point to that. He looked over to the large bass player and remembered what happened earlier when he had brought it up. He stopped to think over the situation carefully. He sighed and gave in.

"Yes, I think so."

Crash crossed his arms over his chest and went quiet again. "Oh, and we're out of gas." He tacked on after a moments pause.

Jimmy couldn't stop himself from cracking a smile. "Thank you." Of course he had already known that, but it was nice that the one he had upset the most had already at least partially forgiven him. Though he felt as if the others would be a bit harder to get to forgive him, Jimmy still felt pretty good. The robot's eyes flickered over to the gas meter nervously. If they didn't get gas soon he wouldn't have to deal with them not forgiving him.

"What are we gonna do Jimmy?" Crash asked him in a quiet voice. Jimmy turned to look at the other man.

"What do you mean?"

"Where are we going to go?" He rephrased the question to what he had meant.

"Well first things first. We need to go get gas..." Jimmy turned the key once again, turning off the large vehicle.

"No, I know that." Crash shook his head and looked down at his lap. Jimmy had never seen the bass player look so.. defeated before in the whole time they had known one another. "What are we gonna do AFTER that?"

The robot had had a feeling that question was going to come from one of them at some point, he had just always been hoping for it to come sooner rather than so soon. "I don't know." Jimmy admitted with a down-turned gaze. He sighed and put his forehead into his hand. "I was hoping it would be possible to get a cure before too long- but honestly I don't know what we're dealing with, and it's been around so long I don't know if it's even possible to..." He trailed off.

"There's no hope is there?" The robot was completely stunned at that line. It was so weird to hear from that man, and not to mention it was completely out of Crash's character! The robot had to pause in shock.

Before he could respond, Jimmy really stopped to think about the sentence his friend had just said. All of his friends had been forced to change so much because of this virus, but it wasn't until now the robot REALLY realized just how much it was they had changed. He knew there was a difference, like they didn't act like kids anymore, but something about him saying that made the robot realize what it all meant.

"Things will never be the same..." Jimmy looked over at his friend with a sympathetic gaze. "But the four of us still have each other."

Crash grimaced slightly at the reminder of Ricky's death, but he didn't bother even thinking about commenting on it. "Okay." He mumbled. Crash buried his face in his arms. "Jimmy?" He spoke once more, this time his voice was mumbled due to his mouth being pressed so close to his arm. It was quiet and just a little hard to understand at first thought.

"Yes, Crash?" Jimmy was worried about where this conversation was going, and he was also worried about the bass player himself. He hoped in vein everyone could go back to being happy again, though he did not vocalize that part.

"Thank you." The other's thanks was barely even audible.

This caught Jimmy off guard, not only because he had expected the worst but also because he had no idea what that was for. "For what?" He asked in puzzled bewilderment.

Crash lifted his head up once again, and then he shrugged. "I just felt like I needed to thank you."

The large man stood up, and Jimmy watched as he turned to leave.

"Oh alright..." The robot still sounded very confused, though that was pretty understandable.

"The others are probably still mad at you." Crash said simply. He walked out.

Jimmy wondered if the 'others' still included Crash as well.


	12. Chapter 12

Unfortunately, it seemed what little gas they had had left in the battletram only actually got them to go a little over two more miles.

"This is bad." The Commander groaned as their vehicle sputtered to a stop.

"You've got to be kidding me!" Eaglebones hissed. The guitar player sighed loudly and let his head fall against the steering wheel with a dull thump.

"Now what?" The Commander turned to look at Crash who was in the seat behind him as he almost always was.

The large bass player shrugged. "We need to get more gas." He said it simply, knowing that it was a task more easier said than it was done.

"Yeah." The Commander unbuckled his seat belt and let it slide back into it's normal position. "I guess I'll go tell Jimmy than." The singer stood up and walked out of the cockpit without another word.

"Guess he's not still mad after all..." Crash said to himself, just loud enough that Eaglebones had heard it.

"What? Of course he's not mad!" The long haired man acted if just the notion of the Commander being mad at Jimmy was preposterous, and in a way it kind of was. "When has the Commander ever been mad for more than like an hour?" Eaglebones had a point there honestly.

Crash chuckled. "Yeah, I guess you're right huh?"

"Yeah man." Eaglebones grinned back at Crash. "Those two will be back to normal in no time, just wait for it. They'll come back in with each other no problem.

That was good enough to soothe Crash's nerves, at least for now.

. . .

As it turned out, Eaglebones was only half right. The Commander was pretty okay with Jimmy now, but the robot was acting weird. He seemed to be on eggshells around the others now, maybe it was because of the incident or because he knew if they didn't get the battletram up soon there was going to be a very big problem with his battery.

It wasn't that he couldn't charge again if for some reason it died, but it was more of a problem of what happened if it died before they managed to get any gas. There was no guarantee that they would even find anything, so if they did it wasn't very likely Jimmy would make it the whole trip back unless they found something very near by.

The Commander sat on top of Jimmy's work bench, kicking his legs back and forth as Jimmy just frowned at the man's behavior.

"We need gas." The singer pointed out to the robot, who had already figured out they ran out after the vehicle stopped and the lights went out.

"Where are we?" Jimmy asked the other. If they were close to a town, or anywhere not in the middle of nowhere, they could probably go find SOMETHING without too much of a problem.

"Uhm..." The Commander paused for a moment as if it was hard for him to remember something he had just seen around ten seconds ago. "Well, I think we're in the desert or something."

Jimmy frowned. "That's...not good."

The Commander nodded a little. "Yeah, tell me about it." He looked a little worried. "So, what are we going to do about this?"

Jimmy stopped to think about it. "We still have to try."

"We?" The Commander's eyes widened. "You mean all of us?"

The Commander's reaction to his statement caused Jimmy to smile just a little. "Yeah, all of us."

The Commander grinned and hopped off the table. "Perfect! I was wondering if you were gonna make us all sit here in the dark! I'll go tell the others!" The singer had his normal childish air about him, making the robot feel at ease once again.

"Come on robot let's go!" The Commander called out to the other as he began making his way out of the lab.

Jimmy's eyes looked over to the charging station for a second as he thought of how low his battery was. He hoped a gas station was nearby, because he knew there was no way they'd be able to take his body to the charger if he did run out of power. He sighed, and exited after the other man.

The two men went up to the cockpit where Crash and Eaglebones turned around to greet them.

"What's the plan?" The long haired male asked.

"We're going to go get the gas." Jimmy told the two. "All of us."

"So get ready." The Commander grinned at them happily. "We're leaving in ten minutes."

"I never said that-"

The Commander waved his hand dismissively at the robot, a large smile still in place on his face. "It's fine don't worry about it."

"But-"

"Sh, it's fine." The singer repeated at him. Jimmy frowned and rolled his eyes at the other but just stayed silent.

"Oh!" Crash sounded pleasantly surprised at that.

"Wait, really? We're all going?" Eaglebones looked shocked at first, but then smiled a little. "Alright then, great." HE looked over to Jimmy. "When are we leaving?"

The Commander crossed his arms over his chest. "I just said in five minutes!"

"You said ten." Crash pointed out with a smile.

"Five, ten whatever." The Commander dismissed him quickly. "Either way."

"We'll leave in ten." Jimmy sighed and gave the guitar player an actual answer.

"Alright." Eaglebones stood up from his seat. "Might as well go get my stuff." He stretched and walked towards the door. "Who knows how long we'll be gone..." He mumbled to himself before walking out.

"Yeah, let's go." The Commander agreed, heading out after the other.

Crash looked over to Jimmy as he stood up. "Do you think we'll find anything?"

Jimmy smiled nervously, one that was unconvincing in trying to comfort the other. "I'm sure we will."

The large man frowned, then left the cockpit. Jimmy sighed, sitting down in the nearest chair. His battery was only at 69%.

. . .

It was hard to tell exactly where they were at this point, but they all assumed it was probably somewhere in the south because of how much desert there was around there. It was hot, but on the bright side at least it was far enough from any type of civilization that there was almost nothing out there. This was a good thing because they probably wouldn't see any zombies in quite a while, but it was also an awful thing because that meant they would have a long walk ahead of them to find a place to get gas.

Eaglebones put his hand over his eyes, scanning the area. "I don't see anything near here."

Jimmy frowned and looked around as well. The guitar player was right, it appeared they were indeed pretty far away from anything other than cactus's and rocks. "Of all the places we could have ran out of gas..." The robot muttered to himself with a sigh.

"So, which way are we gonna go?" The Commander asked as he put his hands on his hips.

"Shouldn't we follow the road?" Crash said. "It has to lead somewhere, right?"

"I think that's our best bet." Jimmy agreed with the bigger man.

"If we move now we might find something before it gets dark." Eaglebones tried to reason with the others, hoping they could all get a move on as soon as possible.

"He has a point." The singer shrugged and they all began to walk down the sandy road.

They barely got anywhere before the complaining began.

"It's so hot." The Commander moaned.

"We should have brought more water..." Jimmy said, eyeing the container hanging off Eaglebones' shoulder. "Maybe we should go back."

"We've been walking for like a mile!" The Commander threw his hands up into the air over his head. "We can't go back now!"

"But we have no idea how far we have to walk." Jimmy pointed out. "I can go ahead alone and you three go back to the battletram."

"No thanks Jimmy." Crash said looking at the robot. "We're all in this together."

The robot sighed. Of course he should have expected that answer, his friends were stubborn after all. This was probably for the best anyway, he knew they would get worried if this trip took longer than an hour.

"Okay." Jimmy knew there was no point in even trying to argue with any of them. "If we're out here for too long it could be dangerous though, so if it starts getting dark you need to turn back."

"No." The Commander said simply to the other. "It's like Crash said, we're all in this together."

Jimmy sighed again, frowning at the singer. "Commander, please."

"Mmm, nope. Sorry robot, but we need to find gas. We can't just leave the battletram empty like this and we can't just let you do everything on your own."

Jimmy had noticed the Commander had seemed more stubborn on manner's like this ever since Eagleclaw had come along. It was kind of annoying and stressful to be honest, but the more commanding the other was the more normal things felt. On one hand, he was glad about that, on the other it was kind of obnoxious. Then again, the singer himself was obnoxious by personality so it wasn't that shocking.

"Yeah see Jimmy." Crash was smiling softly at the robot. "We all agree we want to stay with you." Eaglebones nodded to that.

"If you're going to find gas we're going to be right there with you to help carry it back to the battletram." The guitar player said.

"Remember, you said there was safety in numbers." The Commander pointed out with a huge toothy smile.

"You didn't listen to that before..." Jimmy mumbled.


	13. Chapter 13

Jimmy wasn't used to his battery being drained below forty-percent. Even during nights where it got low, it was never beyond sixty-percent, and he was getting nervous.

It was night now, and they hadn't seemed to be any closer to a city than they were two or three hours ago.

"My feet hurt." The Commander complained loudly. Their pace had slowed down substantially since they had begun, partially due to physical pain and exhaustion.

"Can we take a break?" Crash asked with a wary voice. The robot nodded.

"Only for a few minutes." Jimmy warned them as they all collapsed on the road with groans.

"It's freezing out here." Eaglebones said, beginning to rub his slender arms in hope of warming them up even just a little bit. He breathed into his palms and continued to shiver and try to warm himself up. Crash held out an arm and offered for the guitar player to get closer to him, and he did. Soon the two of them were huddled together in some attempt to keep themselves from freezing.

"Will you keep me warm?" The Commander batted his eyelashes at the robot ridiculously. Jimmy rolled his eyes at the others silliness. The singer caught notice of that action and cackled in response to it.

"We should have brought our coats." Crash sniffed as he pulled the smaller man closer to his chest. Eaglebones made a surprised squeaking noise as he was practically shoved into Crash's chest.

"It was hot earlier though." The Commander quickly reminded the larger man. "We would have burned up."

"We wouldn't have had to wear them." Crash said. "We could have tied them around our waists or something!"

Eaglebones shrugged, a task hard to do when the bass player was holding him so closely. "Who would have known it would be so cold out here?"

"Actually Eaglebones," Jimmy spoke up. "deserts are usually very cold during the night. When the sun goes down here all of the heat escapes into the sky because there's no-"

"Okay Jimmy." The Commander cut the robot off in the middle of his explanation. "I'm gonna let you finish, but-"

"No you're not." The robot cut the other off in return with a scrunch of his nose.

"Well now I'm not! That was just rude."

Jimmy rolled his eyes with a frown. "Alright."

They all sat around on the dirty ground in silence, trying to keep warm from the cold night air.

"We need to keep going." Jimmy spoke up after a few minutes had passed. His battery was still draining fast, and he knew if they didn't get gas soon he would run out of energy before they ever even had a chance of making it back to their vehicle.

"Come on Jimmy, just five more minutes." The Commander whined like a small child. "My legs still hurt."

The robot frowned and stood up despite the others complaints. "I'll go by myself if all of you still need to rest, but we need to find gas quick."

"What's the hurry?" Eaglebones mumbled, sharing the Commander's 'five more minutes' mentality. Jimmy tapped his foot, but didn't actually respond to the question.

"He's right." Crash said, letting go of the guitar player and standing up and moving to the robot's side. "We should keep moving, or else we'll just go to sleep here or something. Besides," He looked over to Jimmy with a small smile. "won't we be warmer if we're walking?" Jimmy smiled as well.

"I think so."

Both the Commander and Eaglebones groaned, looking at each other with a matching lack of enthusiasm on each of their faces. Despite being the opposite of happy about this, they both stood with only a few complaints.

"I'm sure we'll find something soon." Jimmy attempted to reassure them. "We've been walking for quite a while, there's bound to be something nearby, I'm sure of it." In all reality, the robot was trying to convince himself even more than he was the other two. He was scared, and his battery was at 35%. Unless there was something less than an hour away, he had no chance of making it back.

"Yeah!" The Commander seemed to brighten up a bit at the robot's words, and Jimmy smiled at this. He knew the singer's enthusiasm was almost always contagious. "We'll be back in the battletram and in our beds in no time! Aquabats, let's go!"

Just as Jimmy had hoped it would, it seemed the Commander's excitement quickly leaked into the others and caused them to begin moving again probably even at a faster pace than before. The robot was glad to see such a quick change in his friend's behavior and movements, and it was better than he could have hoped. Unfortunately, he knew unless they got incredibly lucky there was no chance for him to be able to make the entire trip back to the battletram. He hid his nervousness however, hoping the others wouldn't notice and get worried or anything like that. Jimmy would hate it if he stressed his friends out more than they probably already were. Besides, there was the slim chance nothing bad would happen and he'd have just worried them for nothing. That slim chance was really all the robot needed to justify keeping his secret.

"I think I see a town nearby!" Eaglebones said with a gasp, squinting as he looked off into the distance.

"Wait, really?" Crash sounded excited, he looked as though he was about to begin jumping around for joy at this point.

"Yeah- I think it's like a mile away from us!"

"Thank God for your eagle-vision!" The Commander cheered, he looked over at the robot excitedly. "Did you hear that Jimmy? We're gonna get the gas!"

The robot smiled sheepishly. His battery was at 15%. There was absolutely no way that even if they DID find gas in the town, that he'd be able to make it back to the battletram. He sighed to himself and continued to pretend to be as excited as the others. "Yeah, let's go get that gas!"

The others began to run, and Jimmy really just wanted to tell them that a mile was still a long way. But, instead of doing that, he let them have their fun. He knew they deserved it. Besides, they were going to be tired either way so even if this just made it happen faster it was all kind of the same in the long run. Or, maybe it wasn't and he just wanted to let them have their fun. Either way, he sprinted with them towards the shape of the distant and abandoned town. Honestly, the robot just hoped that place had at least a little of what they needed.

. . .

The town was tinier than any of them had initially expected. Infact, it looked like it could barely call itself a town! It reminded Crash of that time they had fought the cowboy android, because it really did look like some random old western movie set.

"This place is kinda sad huh?" The Commander said as he looked around at the wooden buildings. He wondered if this place had even had any people living in it before the apocalypse came, because it didn't seem like anyone had been there in years. "Looks really old doesn't it?" He mumbled the last part.

"Yeah." Eaglebones grimaced. "Is this place gonna have any gas?"

Jimmy glanced around nervously. What was going to happen if this place DIDN'T have a gas station? Were his friends just going to keep wandering around in the desert? Was he just going to run out of battery in the middle of their trip? Hundreds of scenerios flooded through his mind, and none of them were very appealing in the slighest. It was at this point he had wished that maybe the others had just stayed back in the battletram, and then he remembered that would have been an even worse scenario than however this one was going to turn out. At least now they would know what happened to him, because if they had stayed they probably would have eventually gotten worried and began to search after him, and honestly that sounded pretty bad to the robot.

"Even if it doesn't," Crash was rubbing his arms once again. "maybe we could just find a place to sleep here. I'm cold and tired." He yawned as if to emphasize his point even more.

"Me too." Eaglebones agreed with the larger man. He looked at the other two Aquabats. "What do you guys think? Can we just spend the night here? It'll probably be easier to see during the day anyway."

"Don't you want to find out if there's any gas here first?" The Commander said with a surprised expression on his face. Crash shook his head no.

"Eaglebones is right, we should be able to search better if there's light." Jimmy agreed with the guitar player, partially because he thought that maybe it would be easier for them to wake up to his dead battery rather than to see it happen themselves.

The Commander crossed his arms over his chest and frowned, outvoted once more. "Alright, fine. We can sleep." He didn't sound very disappointed at the sleeping part of it at all, in fact he

seemed pretty excited about that bit.

"But where?" Crash looked around at the nearby buildings.

"There's probably a hotel of some sorts around here." Jimmy said as he looked around as well. "I'm sure we can find somewhere to rest for the night."

"Yeah, we could probably just sleep on the floor of one of these places if we really had to." Eaglebones said with a slight shrug of his shoulders. "I'm pretty tired already, so I'm not going to be really picky about where we sleep."

"I wish I brought my teddy bear with us..." Crash mumbled under his breath as they began to move once again. The bass player had a hard time sleeping without the toy, though considering how tired he was he probably didn't actually need it tonight. It was more of something like a creature comfort.

They didn't have to walk much further down the street until Eaglebones had found exactly what it was they had been looking for.

"See- right there!" The long haired man pointed to a tall building a few feet in front of them to their right. "A hotel!"

The building looked old and ready to fall apart, then again most things did in both this town and the rest of the Americas, and the paint on the sign was beginning to chip away.

"Looks a little gross." The Commander grimaced as he imagined the state of shape the beds were probably in. "Everything's gonna be dusty in there isn't it?" He asked with a sigh.

"Maybe." Jimmy answered. "But I think it's better than nothing. Besides, you can shake off a little dust."

The four men stepped forward, Crash opening the front door of the building with a loud and pretty annoying squeak.

The inside of the motel was even more worse for wear than the outside had been, which seemed a little weird honestly. The walls were covered in some tacky looking floral wallpaper that was beginning to peel away. The parts of it still intact were stained yellow with age, and it was a pretty unpleasant sight. Most of the ceilings and objects inside of the building had large spiderwebs on them, giving the place an even older feeling to it.

"The doors to the rooms are probably locked." The robot said as he stepped towards the front desk of the hotel. "We might need keys to get in them."

"I wonder if the locks even still work." Eaglebones said idly as he looked around the room in mildly grossed out awe.

The Commander shrugged. "Who knows. Heck, we don't even know how long this place has been abandoned." He stepped forward, and scrunched his nose as the floor beneath his feet groaned and creaked loudly. "Though I'm gonna say it's been quite a while."

"Was this place a ghost town?" Eaglebones asked as he rubbed his finger along a old and dusty wooden table.

Crash tensed up. "Ghosts?" He began to rapidly shake his head. "Nuh-uh no way! I'm not staying here if there's any ghosts! I don't know if you guys know this but ghosts really freak me out!"

"Not real ghosts Crash." Jimmy said, looking at the bass player sympathetically. The large man still appeared to be freaking out, so Jimmy began to elaborate. "Ghost towns are just old abandoned towns that no one has lived in for a long time. There's no actual ghosts here, it's just an expression." Crash seemed to calm down a bit.

"Oh." The bass player said simply, going quiet and looking around with the others once again.

Jimmy stepped behind the reception desk and walked to the back of the room. He easily found the numerous little cubbies that lined the back wall and held the room keys. "Everyone, come here. I found the keys!"

The other men quickly rushed to Jimmy's side, eager to finally get some real rest even if it was in a dirty and pretty disgusting old hotel that hadn't been used in who knows how many years.

"We should probably all be on the first floor."

"And next to each other!" Crash added on to the other's sentence quickly, revealing to everyone that he was obviously still shaken up by Eaglebones' earlier comment. Jimmy nodded to this statement.

"And next to each other." The robot added on as he handed everyone keys to their rooms.

The Commander looked over to the key in Eaglebones' hand. "I want that room."

The guitar player rolled his eyes at the childish nature of the singer and exchanged keys with the other man. He figured there would barely be any difference in them, so why bother putting up a fight? Besides, maybe he would get the good end of the deal from it anyway.

"Alright." Jimmy sighed, unintentionally clenching the little metal item in his hand harder than he had to. "We should all get rested up and look for more gas in the morning."

"Yeah." The other three nodded in agreement.

"Okay." Jimmy smiled at his friends sadly. "Goodnight." The others began to walk away. "I love you guys." The robot blurted out.

The Commander turned to smile at him, walking backwards in the direction of his hotel room. "Love you too robot."

Jimmy's sad smile turned into a genuine one. He stood there by himself until he heard all of the doors close.

He sighed. Only 5% battery remaining.


	14. Chapter 14

The night before no one had any trouble going to sleep, they had all been completely exhausted from the journey it took to reach the little town, so as soon as they had cleaned off the beds enough they all fell asleep nearly immediately.

Uncharacteristically, the Commander was the first one to wake up. He sat up in his bed and yawned, stretching his arms and back as he did so. It took him a moment to look around and remember where he was.

"Oh, right." He sniffed and stepped out of bed. He yawned once again, scratching his back and then rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He wondered if the others were awake yet, though he was almost certain they were.

He stepped out of his room and into the dirty hallway, surprised when he heard the noise of snoring coming from Crash's room. The singer got closer to Eaglebones' door, wondering if he was still asleep as well. He heard the sound of heavy breathing from someone who was obviously still asleep. It was a little weird being awake so early, and he wasn't sure what to do. Then he remembered his robot friend that hadn't even needed any sleep. He grinned.

"Hey, Jimmy!" He whispered loudly at the door of the robot's room. "You in there?" No response. The Commander frowned and jiggled the doorknob, unsurprised that it was locked.

"Where is he?" He mumbled to himself as he turned around and headed towards the front desk. He didn't remember Jimmy ever even going into his room, so maybe the robot had just sat out in the place they had entered from. It wouldn't be that weird if that was the case, in fact he more or less expected that from the robot. He'd probably be worried that they'd get attacked in their sleep or something.

"Oh hey, there you are!" The Commander grinned when he say the robot's back, sitting in a chair pretty close to the hall. His head looked like he was looking down at his lap, and the singer wondered what exactly it was he was doing. "Jimmy?" There was no response.

The Commander stepped forward, frowning a little now that the robot seemed to be ignoring him. "Robot, come on what are you doing?" He was moving forward slower now, more hesitant. There was still no response from his friend. The Commander thought that maybe he had gone into some kind of sleep mode, not that he was entirely sure if Jimmy even DID that. It sounded reasonable enough though, right?

The singer reached the small chair that the robot had been sitting in, and he put his hand onto Jimmy's shoulder.

"Hey, you awake?" Again, there was still no response. The Commander gently shook him. "Jimmy?" He frowned, walking around to the other side of the chair and crouching down to try and get a look at the robot's face. "Come on, wake up." The Commander said quietly, his voice barely raising to even a whisper. He grabbed both of Jimmy's shoulders and shook him more roughly this time, only to receive the robot moving limply in his grasp. The singer took a hand off of the robot's shoulder and slapped him across his cheek.

"Ow!" The Commander hissed as he held his hand. For a moment there he had honestly forgot that the inside of Jimmy's face was made of metal. He took a moment to just hold his now hurt hand, before he stood up once again.

"Alright, you win this round robot." He muttered at Jimmy's unmoving form. "But when I come back we're going to get you to wake up and we're going to go find gas!" The singer huffed as he exited the room, going back to the hall that had the doors to the hotel's bedrooms.

The Commander made a beeline for Crash's room, knowing he would probably be the easiest of the other two to wake up. He immediately began to bang on the door with his fists as soon as he reached it.

"Crash!" The singer called into the wood infront of him. "Get up buddy! This is your wake up call! Come on big guy we got stuff to do! Craaaaash!" He kept yelling and knocking loudly until the door swung open and Crash stood in the doorway with a frown and a yawn.

"What time is it?" The bass player asked as he rubbed his eyes.

"Morning time." The Commander responded simply. "Now hurry up and help me wake Bones up."

"Why can't Jimmy help?" Crash asked in a sleepy voice. Even if he was used to being woken up he needed a few minutes to become fully alert.

"That's why I need you guys to wake up." The Commander responded with a matter-of-fact voice, earning a confused expression from the larger man. "I'll explain it after we wake up Eaglebones, come on." Crash grumbled as he followed the singer over to the door of the sleeping guitar player.

"Eaglebones!" Both of the men called out as they knocked on the door as obnoxiously as possible. "Wake up!"

It didn't take long for the guitar player to throw open the door to his room with a scowl on his face.

"What?" Eaglebones was barely half awake.

"Time to wakey-wakey." The Commander told the other with a grin.

The slender guitarist just stood at the doorway for a moment in silence, then yawned. "Alright."

"That's the spirit!" The Commander said happily, his grin growing as he patted the smaller man on his back. "Now that were all awake..."

"Where's Jimmy?" Eaglebones asked as he looked over the two men.

The Commander frowned. "I was getting to that."

"Is he okay?" Crash asked with a worried tone. He was beginning to look fidgety almost immediately.

"Yeah, see that's what I'm not so sure about..." The Commander mumbled, putting a hand under his chin and looking down at the tacky green carpet of the hotel floor.

"What do you mean?" Eaglebones seemed to wake up immediately.

"Where is he?" Crash looked around frantically.

"Whoa, calm down big fella." The Commander put his hand on Crash's shoulder as an attempt to comfort the larger man. Crash stopped looking around so frantically, and seemed to be a bit more calm after that. "Jimmy is in the front room, y'know where we came in. He looks like he's asleep or something, but I can't get him to respond to anything." The Commander crossed his arms. "I don't know whats wrong with him."

"His battery could be..." Eaglebones' muttering trailed off there. That was a possibility he honestly didn't want to think of right now.

"Let's go find out." The Commander said, heading down the hall in the direction of the front desk.

They basically ran to the front room, and everyone gathered around the chair where Jimmy the robot sat.

"Watch this." The Commander said as he leaned down and began to shake the robot by his shoulders roughly once more, still not earning any type of response from the other Aquabat. "See? Nothing." The singer said, stepping back away from the chair and their friend sitting in it. "I don't know whats wrong with him. Does he have a sleep mode or something?"

"I don't think so." Eaglebones said quietly in response, stepping forward to get a closer look at the robot. "Even if he did," He continued. "I think that would have woken him up, right?"

"What's wrong with Jimmy?" Crash asked in a panic once again.

"I think his battery is dead." Eaglebones responded.

"That's it?" The Commander said with a little relief in his voice. "Then we can just replace it again, right? Until we charge that one?"

"I don't think it'll be that easy Commander." Eaglebones said with a sigh, stepping back. "Where would we even get batteries out here? Those'll be even harder to find than gas."

"That's it- gas!" The Commander was excited once again. "If we can find gas we can take Jimmy back with us to the battletram and charge him no problem! That's what we came here for, isn't it?"

"I don't know, Commander." Eaglebones said as he glanced down to the robot. "Jimmy is kind of heavy, and we walked so far to get here I..."

"Come on Bones," The singer said. "we can drive back here, it's not like we have to carry him!" Eaglebones hummed a little and sighed.

"Let's just go find the gas." The guitar player said, tearing his eyes away from Jimmy.

"We can't just leave him here!" Crash said in a wobbly voice as he realized the other two men were already heading for the door to leave the hotel.

"We have to." Eaglebones told the other sympathetically. "We'll come back."

"We aren't going to leave him here forever." The Commander said as well, walking back over to Crash and patting him sympathetically. "We're gonna come back and get him, but until then he's just gotta wait here. We'll come back as soon as we have gas."

Crash paused for a moment, just staring at Jimmy. The other two men walked towards the door.

"We'll be back." Crash promised as he put his hand on the robot's shoulder. He then quickly jogged after his friends in order to catch up with them.

. . .

"I can't believe this place doesn't even have gas!" Eaglebones grumbled after they had looked through the entire tiny town for anything even remotely resembling a gas station.

"How old IS this place?" The Commander said, rubbing the back of his neck in annoyance.

"What are we gonna do?" Crash asked with wide fearful eyes. They needed gas or else they couldn't go back to the battletram, and if they didn't do that they couldn't save Jimmy and they wouldn't go back to the hotel. The large man looked nervous, afraid that he was going to have to break his promise about returning to the robot.

"We're just going to have to keep going." The Commander told the other two.

"We don't have enough water!" Eaglebones pointed out.

"Well, there's a general store here in town." The singer mentioned. "I'm sure they have some bottles of water or something to drink. We can't just go back to the battletram empty handed, it'd be completely useless." Crash and Eaglbones exchanged a look, knowing the singer was right.

"Okay." The guitar player took a deep breath and then sighed. "Let's go check it out."

"Maybe they have sunblock too." Crash said hopefully as they began to walk towards the tiny little shop. "I don't want my face to get all burned."

"It's a little late for that buddy." The Commander said with a grin. "I think we're all pretty burned up already."

Crash frowned and brought a hand to his face, tenderly poking his red cheeks. He sucked in air loudly as he felt searing pain in his face, confirming the singer had been right about the sunburn. "Aw man..." The bass player moaned sadly. The other two men laughed at him sympathetically.

"You guys have sunburn too!" Crash told them with a huff.

"Yeah, probably." Eaglebones agreed with a large grin.

"We are in the desert." The Commander smiled.

Crash crossed his arms over his chest and puffed out his cheeks like a small child about to throw a fit.

"Maybe there will be something to help our burns too." Eaglebones offered happily, hoping to stop the larger man from getting upset or anything like that.

"We could always just pour water on our face or something." The Commander said with a shrug, lifting a finger and touching his face as well. He hissed in pain. "Oh boy, shoulda seen this coming..."

"Yeah, probably." Eaglebones sighed under his breath in agreement.

"Oh well." The Commander smiled. "Too late for that now, isn't it?" The other two rolled their eyes. Of course the singer would say something like that, especially with his 'just wing it' mentality.

They walked back over to the building with a large sign whose chipping away paint read 'general store'. The front of the building looked to be solid glass, and they could see the row of shelves filling the inside. The windows were a bit dirty, but that was fine.

"I hope they have something." The Commander said as he grabbed the handle to the front door. He pulled on it, only to have the door not move in the slightest. The singer frowned and tried to push it only to receive the same reaction. "I think it may be locked." He told the other two, taking a step back from the door and crossing his arms over his chest.

Eaglebones frowned and stepped forward, trying to open the door as well. "It won't move." He said after rattling the entire door and its frame.

"Here." Crash said stepping forward. "I got it."

"I'm telling you it's locked-" The Commander stopped and watched as Crash broke the window to the store. "Well okay, I guess that works too."

"Here, let me go in first." Eaglebones said. He walked towards the broken glass. "I'll see if I can unlock it from the inside." The other two Aquabats nodded to that statement, and they watched as the smaller guitar player carefully climbed in to the store through the broken window.

Once inside Eaglebones dusted himself off and looked around the small store. It was dirty, and a lot of the things looked like they had spoiled and went bad quite some time ago. The man frowned, then walked over to the door with the intention of letting his other two friends in. He grabbed the door handle and, with some difficulty, forced it open.

"Thanks Bones." The Commander said with a grin as he stepped inside the store, Crash following close behind him.

"It smells awful in here." Crash said, scrunching his nose up in disgust.

"Probably because most this stuff seems to be full of," Eaglebones picked up a partially opened candy bar, with maggots writhing around in it. "maggots. Gross." Eaglebones groaned and dropped the Butterfinger's candy on the ground.

"Right." The Commander eyed the food on the floor warily. "Anyhow, let's see if we can find some water or something else to drink." The singer walked off to look down one of the aisles.

Crash turned to look over at Eaglebones. "Do you think we'll find any gas?" He asked the smaller man.

"I'm sure we'll find something." The guitarist reassured the larger bass player with a smile. "We might have to walk more, but I know we'll get something." With that said, the smallest Aquabat went off to look through the aisles for something as well. Crash sighed, going to the left side of the room to look through everything.

The Commander was unfortunate enough to walk pretty close to where the meat was stored, and he could only pinch his nose in absolute disgust at the scent of who knows how many completely rotted cuts of meat.

"Ugh." The singer groaned as he turned away from the source of the smell. He held his hand over his mouth and nose as he forced himself to continue down the aisle in search of what they had entered the store for in the first place.

Eaglebones wasn't having much luck either, he had ended up in the books and magazines aisle and to make matters worse none of the things were even remotely interest-catching. The guitar player sighed as he moved on from that aisle to the one next to it. This one was full of shampoos and other soaps, and it reminded him of just how long it had been since he had a real shower. His hand moved to his hair unconsciously and he frowned, immediately turning around and moving on from that aisle to the next one.

Crash was in the produce section, walking among aisles upon aisles of rotted vegetables and fruits. It was kind of gross, seeing all the mold and all of the bugs living and growing on the once fresh produce. Crash knew that if Ricky had seen this he probably would have thrown a fit.

"This is gross." The runner would probably say, frowning at the wasted healthy veggies and fruit. He would strongly disapprove, and it was kind of comforting for Crash to try and imagine how Ricky would react, but it also sent a pain through his heart when he remembered there was no way that Ricky could ever actually see this stuff. The bass player frowned, having upset himself. He turned and decided to go look through other aisles since this had nothing but bad thoughts for him now.

The three men each wandered separate aisles of the store for a while longer. The Commander had found the aisle full of water long before they met up again and prepared everything to leave. By the time they had gathered everything up, they had probably already been in the store for over an hour.

"Alright." The Commander wiped his hands on his rash guards and grinned once they finished gathering all the water they could carry. "Who's ready for some instant face burn relief?"

Eaglebones looked at the singer, arching an eyebrow. It was pretty apparent right off the bat that the guitar player had already forgot something the Commander mentioned earlier. "What?"

The Commander rolled his eyes. "Don't you listen to anything Bones?" He asked. The singer picked up one of the bottles of water on the floor, pushing up his goggles with his free hand as he did so. Next he unscrewed the lid off the bottle, and tilted his head up towards the ceiling. The other two men watched as the Commander dumped the contents of the water out and onto his red face. He sighed in content.

"Me next!" Crash said in an excited voice, grabbing one of the bottles as well. He wasted no time in getting it open and immediately dumped the water on his face. Eaglebones watched the two men getting wet, and it sparked him into getting a ingenious idea.

"Hold on!" The guitar player said. The other two Aquabats looked at him in curiosity. They watched as Eaglebones ran off to the left side of the store, leaving Crash and the Commander to exchange a very confused look.

"What's he doing?" The large bass player asked the other man with a furrowed brow and an inquisitive tone in his voice.

"I have no idea." The Commander responded to Crash's question. The singer crossed his arms over his chest and stared in the direction their thinner friend had just run.

Soon Eaglebones came sprinting back to them with a bottle of strawberry scented shampoo in his hands.

"What are you gonna do with that?" The Commander asked the guitar player, cocking his head to the side as he did so.

"Shampoo my hair." Eaglebones responded. "We have more than enough water here and we can't take it all with us, so why not?" Eaglebones shrugged and popped open the lid on the shampoo.

"But you have soooo much hair." The Commander whined at the other man, tapping his foot impatiently despite Eaglebones not having even started what he planned to do.

"It'll only take a few minutes." Eaglebones said with a huge frown. "Besides, it's not like we even know where we're going." He added on quietly with an indignant sniff.

"Yeah well the sooner we get out of here the sooner we know where we're going." The Commander replied with a frown.

"Come on, just let me have this." It seemed it didn't matter what the man said now, because Eaglebones pulled the hair tie out of his hair and shook his head, letting the long and lucious locks flow free for the first time in quite a while. He tugged off his helmet and grabbed a bottle of water, dumping it on his head to try and dampen his hair. It took quite a few bottles before all of his hair was wet, but that didn't really matter since there was so many of them. Eaglebones grabbed the shampoo and applied a generous amount to the palm of his hands. The Commander huffed and tapped his foot loudly and obnoxiously as he rolled his eyes at the other lathering the soap in his hands.

"Hurry it up!" The singer scolded. Eaglebones just shushed him.

The guitarist ran his shampoo-covered hands through his long hair, rubbing the strawberry scented product into his scalp happily. It had been so long since his hair had anything remotely close to a clean, so this was basically like heaven on Earth to the slender guitar player. He hummed happily, and once he was satisfied that the shampoo was applied as good as it was going to be he grabbed another bottle of water and began the process of rinsing it out. The Commander continued to complain.

"Come onnnnn." He moaned like a child. This time it was crash who shushed him. The singer frowned at the larger man. "What was that for?"

"Let him take his time." Crash responded impatiently. The Commander rolled his eyes again and stayed quiet.

Soon enough, Eaglebones was happy with the job he had done on cleaning his hair. He ignored how wet his rash guard had become, knowing since it was so hot outside that may actually be a good thing for him. "Now." He said, looking around. "If only there was something I could use to dry my hair..."

"I saw some paper towels over there!" Crash said happily, pointing over to one of the aisles on the other side of the room.

Eaglebones scrunched up his nose in distaste. Paper towels? Getting wet? That didn't sound like it would be the most pleasant situation ever, but he was pretty sure at this point he didn't have much of a choice. "I guess I can work with that." He grumbled, standing up.

"Number ten!" Crash called helpfully at the guitar player as he walked off in the direction that he was pointed to.

Eaglebones returned once again with a roll of paper towels held under one arm, both hands working on drying a strand of his hair in one of the paper towels. "This is more annoying than I thought it would be." Eaglebones complained, balling up the paper he had been using and tossing it on the ground. He ripped of another one from the roll and continued the tedious task of trying to dry his hair without a real towel.

"Alright." The Commander said, still tapping one of his feet impatiently. "Can we go now?"

"Yeah." Crash said, just ready to get the man to stop being so annoying persistent about them leaving.

"It's about time!" The Commander exclaimed, tossing his hands up into the air. "Now let's go, we need to find some gas and save Jimmy. Wherever we go we're going to have a long walk ahead of us."

"Alright alright enough already." Eaglebones grumbled under his breath, quiet enough that neither of the other two heard what he said. He tossed another paper towel to the ground.

"I'm ready to leave this town." The Commander said as he pushed open the door to the store, stepping outside into the harsh sunlight once more. He put a hand over his eyes and took a deep breath. "Alright you two, let's go. Who knows how much daylight is left."

"It's still early, Commander." Eaglebones said, glancing over to the sun with squinting eyes. "It's probably not even noon yet!"

The singer ignored the other man. "Let's follow the road out of here. I bet we can reach another town before it gets dark."

Crash and Eaglebones exchanged an unsure look, but followed the Commander down the road anyway.


	15. Chapter 15

It came as a surprise to all of them that by the time the sun was beginning to set there was a city in sight. Not a small town like the last place they had been, but an actual large city with impressive buildings showing themselves off in the horizon.

"See boys?" The Commander grinned despite being completely exhausted. "A city! There's bound to be gas around there somewhere!"

Crash fidgeted. "I dunno Commander..." His worry was fairly evident in his shakey voice. "That place looks pretty big. There's probably a lot of infected there..." The large man glanced around nervously as if just saying the word 'infected' would cause them to appear and attack the small group.

"Yeah, probably." The Commander didn't sound deterred by logic in the slightest. In fact, his grin only seemed to become even larger. "But we have weapons, so it isn't THAT big of a deal, right?"

Eaglebones frowned. "No, I still think it's kind of a big deal."

The Commander dismissed that logic as well. "We're gonna be fine, alright? We get in, we get out. Piece of cake! We just need to go in far enough to get some gas and then we can leave."

With a sigh, the guitar player scanned the area around them. He could already see some zombies outside of the city, and a few others scattered around the rest of the desert around that area. He frowned, knowing that was probably a very bad sign. If there was that many outside of the city, how many would there be inside of it?

The closer they were to the city, the more uncomfortable Eaglebones got. The buildings were tall and majestic, so it was obvious that at one time it had been a big deal and full of people. He stared for a moment, then realized what they were looking at was multiple casinos.

"I think this is Las Vegas." The guitar player said with wide eyes.

"What, really?" The Commander stopped to look at the place in front of them. He squinted, trying to see it better but to no avail. "I'll just have to take your word on that." He said finally, realizing they weren't close enough for him to get a good look at it yet.

"Then it IS a big city." Crash said with a bit of fear in his voice. Jimmy had always warned them that the larger population a place had, the more zombies there was likely to be there. If that was true than this place would be crawling with infected everywhere. Just that thought was honestly enough to make Crash uncomfortable.

"This is really bad news Commander." Eaglebones tried to warn the singer with a huge frown on his face.

"Come one Eaglebones, don't worry about it so much." The Commander's dismissive attitude and responses were beginning to grind the guitar player's nerves pretty badly. "I told you, everythings gonna be just fine."

"Commander-"

"Not you too Crash!" The singer sounded exasperated. "Don't you guys trust me?"

Both of the other men's frowns just grew. They both looked at one another in annoyance. Honestly, the Commander's stubbornness was kind of bad news (at least in situations like this one). It was evident that his plan was a terrible idea, but his thick headedness stopped him from listening to any and all reason that would make him realize it.

"Let's just go." The singer told the other two men, readying his weapon eagerly. "Get in, get out. Come on guys, we got this."

Crash and Eaglebones just continued to stare at one another and sighed. The singer went back to walking down the road.

Crash turned over to the smaller sized guitar player and frowned at him. "He's going to make us go there no matter what we say, isn't he?"

The guitarist nodded reluctantly. "Yeah, I bet he is."

Crash sighed loudly once more, an exasperated noise that seemed to effortlessly convey the negative thoughts and emotions he had about this situation. He began to walk after the singer, knowing that was probably his only option at this point.

"This is still a terrible idea." Eaglebones whispered to no one in particular before following the other two men. This was the exact opposite of what he wanted to do, but like Crash he knew the Commander's stubbornness would prevent them from having any real say in the matter. Besides, he couldn't just turn around and go alone anywhere. He needed his friends as much as they needed him, or maybe even more. Besides who knew what was out there? He certainly wasn't eager to find out on his own. Even if it was dangerous he'd much rather stay with his friends.

Just as the guitar player feared it would happen the closer they got to the buildings of the city, the more infected there was.

It wasn't exactly hard to deal with the zombies that posed a threat. Three men, two guns, three other weapons. They were actually in pretty good condition all things considered, in fact it was pretty easy for them to kill off anything that tried to get too close to them. However, despite the fact that none of these small groups seemed to be a threat, Eaglebones was still incredibly bitter about the situation.

"I knew this was a mistake since the beginning!" The long haired man said through gritted teeth after over a dozen of scattered zombies had come towards them only to die. They hadn't even actually reached the real outskirts of the city, so this was a pretty bad sign for what laid ahead.

"Yeah, Commander." Crash lowered his still smoking shotgun with a scared expression. "We should turn around- it's getting dark and we don't know how many of these things could be there waiting for us." The large man glanced over to the singer.

"I know it's dangerous." The Commander sighed, putting his gun into part of his belt. He began to rub his temples. It looked as though he had aged years in only a few short seconds. "You guys should go back." The Commander sucked in a deep breath and made a determined expression. "But I need to find gas. For Jimmy." It was apparent he was trying his hardest to sound strong and brave, but there was a slight wobblying and hesitation in his voice that completely betrayed him and ruined the entire superhero act. Eaglebones and Crash both took notice of this, and realized why their friend was behaving so recklessly.

Crash stepped forward, putting a hand on the Commander's shoulder as he did so. The singer looked up at the larger man. Crash tried to smile as warmly and as comforting as possible for him when he was actually scared of whatever lay ahead for them in the city. "It's okay." Crash's voice came out stronger than he had expected it to, and because of that he had the courage to continue talking. "We're with you all the way. Right Eaglebones?" Both men turned over to the thin man.

Eaglebones smiled and nodded. "Yeah, we're not going anywhere."

They all stood there like that unmoving and silent for a while longer, before the Commander finally cracked a grin himself.

"You guys..." He pulled his gun back out with a certain gusto he had lacked before. "Alright, let's go get some gas!"

"For Jimmy!" They all shouted in at the end in unison.

The rest of the walk to the deserted desert city was spent with a new and fresh sense of excitement. Even killing the zombies was no longer a bothersome or annoying task. They were all so excited at the thought of getting their friend back that they didn't even worry about what lay in wait for them in the near future. Heck, the stress from earlier seemed to almost have completely disappeared. It was as if the trio were now three different people, three people who hadn't spent hours walking in the desert for something they didn't know they could find. They were happy now, and even if somewhere hidden deep inside there was a bit of fear it was just a small sliver compared to earlier. All in all, it seemed as if that short pep talk had been exactly what they all had needed. That was like a small break, and that was all they needed to boost their energy up two-fold. Basically they acted as if some kind of spell had been cast over them, which was a good thing. All they had here was hope and one another. Without either of those things, they'd be lost. More lost than they were in the desert anyway.


	16. Chapter 16

Unfortunately for them, the city of Las Vegas was as bustling and full of people in life as it was in death. Hundreds of the infected were just stumbling around one another in the streets, making a lot of the city's walkways much too dangerous to even imagine going through.

The men all came to a halt right outside what they imagined the zombie's hearing range to be.

"This is worse than we expected it was going to be." Eaglebones said in a harsh whisper over to his friends."Do you still think we should do this?" He asked as he turned his attention over to the singer.

The Commander's mouth pressed into a thin line. For a split second his eyes seemed to show something that appeared to be fear, but it was gone almost as fast as it appeared. "Yeah." He answered finally after more than just a few moments of silence. He exhaled slowly and loudly, closing his eyes as he did so. "Yeah, I'm sure." The singer nodded a little, opening his eyes once more. "You homies still up for this?"

Crash hesitated. He knew they needed gas for the battletram, and to get Jimmy back to life, but he was scared. He hadn't been scared of zombies, he still wasn't, but he was scared to die. He was afraid of what would happen if they failed here. Crash's mouth felt dry and his tongue felt as if it were made of lead as he had to pause to take a few seconds to compose himself. Then, finally, he managed to force out his answer. "Yeah, I'm in."

Even though Eaglebones had had more time to think before answering he still paused. He had a terrible feeling about this plan, and the more he thought about it or looked out at the city's streets the more scared he was. "I-" His voice cracked pathetically. He cleared his throat, trying again. "If you two are doing it, so am I."

"Alright." The Commander grinned again, his voice excited once more. "Don't worry, we can do this." The singer tried to reassure his friends as best he could when even his hands were shaking in fear. Once again, Crash put a hand onto his friends shoulder to try to comfort him once he realized the other man's hands were shaking ever so slightly. When Eaglebones noticed he did the same gesture as the larger man, smiling warmly as well. "Thanks you too." The Commander said softly to them, grateful they supplied him with wordless sympathy instead of making him self conscious with questions or any other form of verbal communication about it. He felt better with his friends at his side like this.

"Now," The Commander's grin quickly went from a thankful one to a playful toothy one. In all honesty, this was the grin that more seemed to fit on his goofy features. "who's ready to go kill some zombies?" Crash and Eaglebones looked at one another with excitement, something that hadn't been too common throughout the rest of the trip.

"We're going to have to be pretty quiet." Eaglebones reminded both of his friends sternly as they began to head closer inside of the infested city. The infected's groans grew louder, making each of the men that much more anxious.

"Get in, get out." The Commander repeated once more in a relatively low and quiet murmur. "And do it quietly."

Now, anyone that has ever heard of the Aquabats knows they are not the most particularly 'quiet' group of men in the world. In fact, they were quite the opposite. They were rowdy and easily excitable, a combination that lead to some pretty loud moments. It would be had for them to be quiet and remain a band, so it wasn't like anyone really expected them to be anything less than noisy. That, however, was a terrible downfall in a situation and a world like this. The infected did not only have a keen sense of smell, but one of hearing too. Maybe being quiet didn't actually matter because of that, but it certainly didn't hurt anyone. This is important to note because as soon as they had entered the danger zone, Eaglebones' nose began to tickle.

"Oh no." The long haired man whispered in complete horror. The other two turned around to face him, curious and afraid of why Eaglebones had said that. "I'm gonna sneeze." Both Crash's and the Commander's eyes widened to almost twice their normal size when they realized what that meant.

"No, you gotta hold it in!" The Commander hissed at his friend. He quickly shoved his hand under Eaglebones' nose as an attempt to stop the sneeze from happening.

"I-" Eaglebones took in a deep gaspy breath, and both of his companions tried to prepare themselves for what was about to happen. "-Can't!" The guitar player took in another quick breath, and then sneezed incredibly loud.

In reality the sneeze was probably one of normal volume, but because of the circumstances it had seemed louder than even a gun going off. It echoed through the empty city as if making sure everything in the area knew exactly where they were. All three of the men stood still in absolute horror as their brains tried to register what it was exactly that had just took place.

They were all mortified as they heard the sound of a probably huge horde of zombies being alerted to their presence. It took less than a second for the men to react.

"Run!" The Commander screeched, but all of their legs had already been moving by the time the word had left his lips.

"Oh God we're dead we're dead." Eaglebones repeated over and over as they ran, his voice squeaky as tears began to fill his eyes. "We're all gonna die and it's all my fault!" He hiccuped. "I'm sorry!"

"Come on- keep up!" Noticing the guitar player was falling behind rather quickly the Commander harshly grabbed the other man's thin wrist and practically dragged him along as they sprinted away from the rapidly nearing crowd of zombies.

Crash turned his head slightly as he ran, catching a glimpse of just how many infected were following after them. There was hundreds- maybe even thousands- of the snarling blood coated beasts that were once human beings. The bass player was terrified but he kept running as best he could to keep up with his friends. For some reason, his mind decided to travel back to memories of Ricky. 'Not now!' Crash thought as a few tears stung his eyes. He closed his eyes and squeezed out the unwelcome liquid, never losing speed while doing so. There was so many zombies closing in on them and there was no way they'd all make it. The large man's eyes darted over to his friends. The Commander looked panicked, his eyes quickly moving back and forth as if he was trying to find a place to hide. Eaglebones was crying and sputtering, stumbling over his own feet as he struggled to keep up with the singer's pace.

Crash was scared. So scared. He felt his heart race in fear and his legs wanted to collapse under him like jelly, but he stayed upright. He wanted to cry and get away somehow, though he knew that was impossible. Crash was absolute, one hundred percent, terrified. But, despite how afraid he was, he knew what he had to do to protect his friends.

The bassist suddenly and abruptly brought himself to a stop, the change in momentum almost making him fall on to his face.

"Crash?!" The Commander had stopped running as well, staring at his friend with a facial expression that could only be interpreted as complete shock and terror. "What are you doing?!"

"Commander." Crash still looked afraid, his face betraying him no matter how brave he was trying to appear. "Take Bones and get out of here."

"What- no- we can't!" The singer furrowed his brow with wide eyes and tried to grasp what the bass player was saying. "We're not leaving you!" The Commander forced out louder than he had intended to.

Crash looked over to the horde of zombies that were fastly approaching them with alarming speed. "Please-" His tone was urgent and pleading. "I want to do this, but you guys have to go! Now!"

The Commander opened his mouth to try and respond again, only to be roughly tugged forward by Eaglebones.

"Come on- Commander we have to GO." The guitar player said with pleading eyes as he tried harder to get the singer to move as Crash had instructed.

"Please!" Crash added.

The Commander still looked incredibly unsure, his eyes beginning to overflow with tears and his mouth set in a partially-open, completely broken looking frown. His face already looked like it was covered in guilt. "Okay." The singer said in a shakey voice. "Okay." It cracked at the end of the word, and he let the guitarist begin to pull him along as he had done to the other only moments before.

"Remember to get the gas!" Crash called out to them with a sad smile.

The Commander turned around again just in time to see the entire horde of flesh-hungry monsters surround one of his last living friends.


	17. Chapter 17

The Commander and Eaglebones didn't even make it halfway across the city before they had to stop and rest. Both of them were still crying at least a little, and the long haired, thin guitar player was still a stuttering and sobbing mess (probably more so now than he had been before).

"It's all my fault." Eaglebones forced out, barely coherent in between his sobs. "This is all my fault."

The Commander sat silently, pulling his knees up to his chest without saying anything. There really wasn't anything to say actually. He could come up with any number of things that he could, hypothetically, speak aloud, but none of them seemed...appropriate. Silence seemed more fitting for a moment like this anyway. Silence fit mourning better than any empty phrase he could have said.

So sit in silence they did. Once the guitarist had seemed to run out of things to repeat, he just sat there crying as quiet as possible for him.

It seemed like eternity, or perhaps it had only been an hour, or even a few minutes, before the Commander finally forced himself to speak.

"He didn't have to die." The singer's voice was low and cracking, uneven probably because of the tears still rolling down his face. "Not like that. He could have came with us- he didn't have to..." The Commander choked, burrying his face in his knees.

Eaglebones didn't respond. He just sniffled pathetically and looked at the other man.

Both of their features were beginning to dim in the dying sunlight. Soon it would be completely dark and as cold as it was last night. Though he knew better, the Commander liked to believe maybe the freezing wind would be able to dim his emotions as much as it would dull his other senses.

The Commander sighed out shakily, unsure of what to do now. He knew they still needed to find what they had come here for in the first place, but at the same time he just didn't feel... up to it. Losing three of your best friends in the span of less than a month usually had an effect similar to this on most people.

"We have to keep moving." Eaglebones told the other, as if they both didn't already know that.

"Yeah." The Commander said with a nod. He tried to rub the wetness from his eyes. "Yeah, we should... get moving." His voice sounded empty and monotone as slowly managed to force himself to stand up.

The Commander held out a helping hand for Eaglebones who was still sitting on the ground. The guitar player sniffed pathetically and looked up towards the singer. They sat there staring at one another expectantly for a prolonged period of time before, finally, Eaglebones reached out and took a hold on the Commander's sweaty palm with his own shakey one. The standing man tugged the thinner one to his feet and they both dusted themselves off in quiet. The sun had already finished setting at this point and it was now officially night.

"So..." The thin man said slowly as if he was unsure of his own ability to speak. Eaglebones paused to gather his thoughts. "...Where do we go now?"

The Commander didn't seem to have an answer anymore. It seemed like this was the first time since the two had met each other that the singer was at a complete loss.

They stood like this for a few minutes longer, the guitar player patiently waiting for some kind of answer and the Commander waiting for the strength to give one to him.

Finally, the Commander seemed to trust himself enough to try and speak. "I guess we should-" He stopped to clear his throat, then restarted his sentence. "I guess we should just keep going the same direction we've been going this whole time." There was a hint of bitterness to this comment, but Eaglebones didn't mention it.

"Right..." The guitar player replied uneasily. He didn't know what was going to happen once, or if, they did get the gas, but he hoped everything would go smoothly from this point on.

The two men returned to walking down the sandy path through the city at an almost leisurely pace. Neither of them wanted to continue on at this point, but they felt as if they had to. It was too late for them to turn back, so they just continued to do what they had come to do; look for gas.

Luckily, Las Vegas was a big city so even after running for God knows how long they still hadn't left it. Unfortunately, that meant there was still hundreds of zombies in the area that they needed to worry about.

"How much longer do you think until we can find something...?" Eaglebones finally spoke up after they had wondered around the city for approximately

about an hour or so. It was dark and hard to see, but the not-so-distant sound of moaning zombies reminded them it wasn't safe to stop for the night.

"I have no idea." The Commander mumbled in response, squinting to try and see something. "But hopefully not long. Who knows how long it will even take us to walk back to the Battletram now."

The guitar player frowned. He had actually almost forgotten WHY they were out here searching for gas. That was a bit weird all things considered, but it was hard to think after losing one of their last remaining friends. All in all, this was turning out to be a very very unpleasant trip.

"Besides." The singer continued on. "I don't mean to be a bearer of bad news, but it's possible for there to be no gas here." He sighed. "But that's not a thing I really want to consider. Hopefully we can get Jimmy charged up soon so we can have our robot friend here again." It was too dark to see the Commander's face, but if circumstances were different maybe Eaglebones would have been able to look over and notice how resigned the singer's expression was beginning to appear.

They went back to walking in silence, both of the men trying to squint in the dark and make out some sort of siloutte of a gas station. Needless to say it wasn't exactly easy work, and for all they knew they could have actually already passed what they were looking for (and giving the time they had been walking that was more likely than anything else, since there should have been hundreds of places to get gas in a city like Las Vegas).

"Y'know." The Commander frowned, coming to a stop. Eaglebones cocked his head and looked over to his friend in curiosity. "I don't think we should keep doing this in the dark."

"Should we stop in a hotel then?" Eaglebones frowned, going back to scanning the area for some place to sleep.

"I guess so." The singer agreed with a shrug. "I'm just exhausted and we can't make progress if we can't see." The guitarist decided to leave out reminding the other that he had his eagle-vision. "Let's just stop some place, maybe make a fire, and then get some rest. Jimmy and the Battletram aren't going anywhere."

"Hey wait a second!" Eaglebones sounded excited all of a sudden. "There's a huge casino over there. Do you think we could just stay the night in there?" Eaglebones asked upon seeing the huge building maybe one or two blocks down the road from where the duo currently stood.

"There's hundreds of those around here." The Commander said under his breath with a roll of his eyes. "Do you see anything that would be more...comfortable? Like a hotel?"

"Commander, it's dark." Eaglebones sighed. "I still don't see much of anything, even with my eagle-vision."

The singer let out a huge sigh of defeat. "Okay-" His tone of voice sounded a bit...resigned. "Let's just get in there. I'm freezing." The man rubbed his arms as if to prove some sort of point on just how cold he was.

The two men speed-jogged over to the abandoned building of the casino. The entirety of the front of the building had once been made up of glass. By this point however most of the glass that had made up the front was broken, leaving the inside of the building pretty open to the elements. The bits of glass still held in place were all smeared with old blood.

"We gotta be careful in there..." Eaglebones looked over the mess of shards of glass on the ground. "This place is probably just crawling with zombies."

"Hopefully not." The Commander said half-heartedly. He looked at the frame of the window, breaking off a piece of the glass that had still been in place. The singer ran his thumb over it and frowned. "Let's just find a place to rest already." He dropped the glass he had been looking at and carefully entered the casino.

The floor was covered in a particularly unpleasantly patterned carpet. Because of the broken windows in the front wain had gotten inside of the building and began to cause everything inside to mold and have a terrible smell.

"This is way gross." The Commander complained as they walked through.

"Do you think we'll find any gas nearby?" Eaglebones mumbled in an attempt at starting some kind of idle conversation as he followed the singer through the building. The Commander shrugged, not giving any real answer. Eaglebones tried again, this time by pointing something out. "I don't think we're gonna find anywhere TOO comfortable in here."

"Maybe not. But maybe there some room off the main part somewhere, a place we could sit back and be...kinda safe in."

"And if there's a restaurant maybe we could find some food." The long haired man looked down at his stomach.

"Good thinking Eaglebones!" The Commander congratulated the other for their idea. Eaglebones grinned. The singer paused for a moment.

"Actually, hold on a second." The Commander thought about the bag on his back, trying to remember if there was any kind of food inside of it. And then he stopped walking, burying his face in his hands as he came to an awful realization. "Oh God..." He mumbled softly into his palms

"What is it?" Eaglebones asked with wide and curious eyes.

"Crash... Crash had the food."

They both fell into silence as they let that sink in. Now their survival would be based off of luck, if they could find more food or not, which was something that wasn't exactly 'easy' in the past few months. And, with the fact the building they were in was pretty much just open to the public it was pretty probable that the building had already been completely looted.

Eaglebones stared at the ground in silence as they both returned to walking.

The Commander glanced around the room at the old and rusted slot machines. Despite the world having only been like this for a little over three months this place looked like it had been left to the elements years ago. A lot of the chairs lay on the ground as if people in a panic had knocked them over.

"This place is kind of sad, isn't it?" The singer said quietly to himself, much too low for the other man to hear. He crinkled his nose up as he looked over all of the destruction. A few of the slot machines had cracked screens, others were smeared with blood or entirely broken. It looked as if there were no dead to be found here, infected or otherwise.

Eaglebones began to examine one of the busted machines, one whose screen flickered with static behind cracked and broken glass.

"What is it Bones?" The Commander asked coming up behind the guitar player.

"I think it's…" Eaglebones' eyes widened in surprise as he realized what it was they were looking at. "It's a cartoon!"

The singer, with his interest now peaked, leaned closer to the screen in curiosity.

"It's amazing this place has electricity after so long!" The Commander frowned as he watched the dull image of a familiar bat flicker on and off of the screen. It was hard to say what was going on for sure, but it looked like the little bat was… filing his taxes.

"Let's move on." Eaglebones said in a bland voice, uninterested in watching anymore of whatever that cartoon was.

The duo continued to head towards the back of the large building, noticing the faint light that was illuminating from the numerous screens that were all letting out a low electric hum.

"How does this place have any power at all?" The long haired guitar player asked with a confused frown.

"That's a good question Eaglebones." The Commander looked around them just inspecting the area as if that could somehow give him a hint. "Unfortunately I don't have a very good answer."

"I wasn't expecting you to." Eaglebones let out a rather defeated sounding sigh. The commander gave him a sympathetic look, but then just returned to being silent.

There was a bit of tension between the two now, there always seemed to be in all reality, but that was to be expected. Out of the five they had started with, even six at one point, there was only two of them left. That would be enough to cause anyone at least a few problems.

They walked to the back wall of the main casino room where they arrived to a door that read 'Employee Lounge'.

"Perfect!" The Commander exclaimed both loudly and happily.

Eaglebones found the singer's smile to be quite infectious, and soon he too was beginning to grin. With a new excitement in him he pulled the door open; surprised when something quickly grabbed a hold of his wrist.

"Eaglebones!" The Commander shouted in horror.

The guitar player's eyes went wide in terror as he watched, seemingly in slow motion, a zombie's jaw peek from behind the door. Eaglebones couldn't hold back a scream as its teeth sunk into his wrist.

"Commander! Help me!" It was too late to help him however, because by the time the singer had forced himself to move the infected had already taken a rather large chunk of out Eaglebones' arm.

"I'm so sorry Eaglebones." The Commander said, squeezing his eyes shut and pushing the guitarist out of the way and to the ground. In the same movement the singer threw himself at the lounge door, shutting it with a 'BANG' on the zombies head.

"What are you doing?!" The guitarist asked frantically as the Commander grabbed Eaglebones' sword.

"Sorry-" The Commander repeated once more, lifting the others sword high above his head with shaky hands. Eaglebones squeezed his eyes shut, afraid of what was about to happen to him. Hundreds of outcomes flooded into his mind and none of them were exactly what one would call 'appealing'.

With a grunt the sword's blade came down on Eaglebones' arm, causing him to scream as the unrelenting metal sunk deep into his already pained flesh.

"It's gonna be okay-" The Commander's voice was uneven as he pulled the sword up and above his head once more.

Eaglebones sobbed as the Commander brought the sword down into his arm again and again.

"Please-" Eaglebones choked out, his voice cracking and tears streaming down his face. The pain was almost too much and he knew if this were to continue much longer he would most likely pass out.

"It'll be over soon- God- I'm almost through." Once again the sword was taken down on his already mangled arm for the fourth time. As promised that was the last hit that was needed to sever the infected arm.

"Okay." The Commander let the sword fall out of his hand, hitting the carpeted floor with a dull 'thud'. "Okay." The Commander repeated it again, hands shaking violently as he looked down at his friend. He managed the push the heels of his palms into his closed eyes before dropping to his knees next to Eaglebones. The guitarist's eyes were closed and he was breathing heavily.

The singer sat there in silence trying to gather himself well enough to come up with the next move.

"Okay-" The Commander looked down at the stub that had become Eaglebones' left arm. It was bleeding pretty badly, and the Commander was certain if he didn't do something soon Eaglebones would more than likely go into shock- or something worse.

"We need to move." The singer said slowly, looking around the casino for a safer place to hide. "Let's go." He grabbed Eaglebones by his remaining arm, pulling the smaller man off of the ground and onto his feet.

Eaglebones, who was probably unconscious, stood on legs that were about as stable as a baby deer's. His head lulled over to the side limply like some kind of toy.

"Let's do this homie, we got it." The Commander grunted. He was practically dragging the other towards where he was certain he had seen a bathroom.

The Commander kicked the door open. The lights tried in vain to stay on but instead only flickered pathetically. The singer moved over to the counters.

"Here we go buddy." The Commander said to himself, gently managing to lift the past out guitar player into his arms. Eaglebones frowned, his eyes still shut. He groaned quietly.

The singer laid Eaglebones out on the sink counter, which was just big enough to have him and a little left over room.

"Probably not the most sterile place…" The Commander mumbled quietly. "Maybe if we're lucky Jimmy will take a look at it later? I'm sure we have some kind of disinfectant in the lab that's not bleach." The singer laughed to himself over that comment, still in slight disbelief anyone would use BLEACH of all things to clean a wound.

The Commander shook his head, walking over to one of the sinks. He turned the faucet, unsurprised when not even a single drop of water came out of it.

"I don't know what I expected." He sighed, looking over at Eaglebones. "It's gonna be okay…probably." The singer said more to himself than his friend. He then moved over to the paper towel dispenser, reaching in a pulling out a few brown towels.

Eaglebones groaned once more when the singer began to try and wrap the towels around the wound.

"God…" The Commander whispered as he tried to look away from the damage he had done to save the others life. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright." Eaglebones replied, his voice quiet and barely even audible. He was pale and sounded awfully weak, a combination that was never a good sign under circumstances like this one.

"I need something to stop the bleeding." The Commander thought aloud.

"The strap…" Eaglebones rasped out.

The Commander looked to his friend with a raised eyebrow. "The what now?"

"Guitar strap." Eaglebones repeated. The singer just stared in confusion for a moment before everything clicked.

"Oh. Oh!" The Commander looked at the guitar strap that was hanging off of the others shoulder loosely. "But then you'll have to carry that thing around." He frowned.

"It'll be okay." Eaglebones' voice was barely above a gravelly whisper, hoarse and relatively quiet. "Just make sure this doesn't kill me."

The Commander smiled grimly. "No promises."

"Thanks." Eaglebones rolled his eyes.

"Anytime." The Commander replied before gently tugging off the other man's guitar. He struggled with the strap for almost a minute before he actually managed to get the thing undone. "Okay, let's do this."

The Commander took a deep breath and pressed more paper towels against his friend's stub of an arm, then he put the strap around it to both hold everything in place and in hopes it would at least slow the bleeding. The singer took a step back, admiring his handy work on the whole thing. "That should probably hold it." He frowned, staring at it harder. "For now at least."

Eaglebones grunted, his eyes closed once more.

The Commander looked sad before sighing down and sitting next to the guitarist on the counter. He sighed, letting his head fall back and thud dully on the wall behind him.

"It shouldn't be like this…" The singer said quietly, staring at the wall across from them.

"No kidding." Eaglebones said, the words slurring together and becoming a rather jumbled mess.

"We just need to get out of here." The Commander rubbed his temples.

"Rest first."

"Yeah." The Commander agreed with a sigh, closing his eyes. "Yeah…"


	18. Chapter 18

Falling asleep while sitting up is never exactly a good or smart idea, and more likely than not you'll end up regretting it when you wake up. This was, unfortunately for him, a lesson the Commander would receive upon getting up.

"Oh man…" The singer groaned, rubbing his sore neck with a hiss of pain. "Hey Bones-" The Commander looked over to his right only to see that he was entirely alone in the bathroom. "Eaglebones?!"

He jumped off of the counter, looking around frantically for even a glimpse of his friend.

"Eaglebones!?" He said it louder this time, more worried and scared.

"Calm down." A voice came from the doorway, and the Commander was quickly relieved to see that it was none other than the man he was searching for.

"Hey-" The Commander's eyes widened as he realized the other was holding something in his hand. "Wait a second. Is that…?"

Eaglebones grinned, dropping the plastic container to the floor. "Gas? Yes, yes it is."

The Commander's expression of astonishment quickly morphed into one of complete joy.

"I can't believe it!" The Singer ran forward, pulling the one armed man into a tight hug. "Eaglebones- you did it!"

"Yeah, and it only took a few minutes. Honestly I was kind of hoping to get back before you woke up. You know, as some kind of surprise."

The Commander smiled and held Eaglebones at arm length, looking over his friend with a strange but happy expression. "I could kiss you right now-"

"Please don't."

Both of the men laughed happily, glad that their long search was finally coming to an end.

"Come on, let's go save Jimmy!"

. . .

Unfortunately for them, the return journey would be just as long as the one it took to get to where they were. The walk back to the battletram, while it was a little bit happier, was much harder on the duo.

"Why'd we have to come out so far?" The Commander complained, using his free hand that wasn't holding the gas to shield his eyes from the hot desert sun.

Eaglebones shrugged. "I dunno." The guitar player looked down at his stomach. "But I don't feel too good..."

"Probably just the heat. Or you're hungry." The Commander offered, not wanting the other to begin to worry. "When was the last time we stopped to rest?"

"Not that long ago I think..."

"Really?" The Commander hummed. "Well, it still couldn't hurt."

"I just want to get out of this sun, it's way too hot out here. Once we get back to the battletram we can finally have air conditioning." Eaglebones sighed dreamily.

The walk was insanely hot, just as before, and a harsh sun beat down on them all day making the trip close to unbearable. In fact, it almost felt HOTTER than it had last time.

The duo decided on stopping in the same hotel they had spent the night in on their first trip, and it was no surprise to enter it and see everything in just the same way it was when they had left. Jimmy sat as they had last seen him, slouched over in the same chair and unmoving.

"Hey homie." The Commander greeted the robot even if he couldn't respond or even hear the hello. "Don't worry, we'll get you out of here soon."

"Yeah." Eaglebones tacked on in agreement. His voice was weaker than it had been before, and he looked exhausted.

Taking note of that, the Commander put an arm around his friend. "Come on, let's get you to bed."

Eaglebones frowned, not liking how he was being treated like a child. He didn't want any unnecessary conflict however, so he kept his displeasure to himself.

Once the guitar player had been escorted to his bed, the Commander returned to the reception room. He sat down in the chair next to Jimmy's.

There was a silence at first, though that was to be expected when only one of them could even participate in a conversation.

"Crash is..." The singer's soft voice squeaked and he stopped talking as if he was simply unable to finish that thought. "Eaglebones lost an arm. I hoped that could save him but...but I think he's just getting worse." The Commander looked over to Jimmy. He looked more lost than he had ever been in his life. "We need you Jimmy. Please- we got the gas but-" The Commander choked audibly. "I need you. We can't do this-"

The singer was actually crying now, and he appeared to have lost any and all ability to talk at this point.

The Commander just let himself sob before beginning to try and collect himself and his thoughts. It took a moment before he was composed, sitting in silence and mulling through his thoughts with a little sniff every once in a while. Once he was sure he had worked through it, at least a little, he stood up.

"We're gonna get that gas to the battletram." He murmured, looking over towards Jimmy with a small smile. It was obvious he had been crying, but he was trying to play it off cool even if there had been no audience to his breakdown. "I won't fail."

With that said, the Commander left the room and left Jimmy alone once more.


	19. Chapter 19

The final stretch of their journey had begun for Eaglebones and the Commander. The duo was quite ecstatic about this to say the least. Even Eaglebones, who was getting progressively weaker with each passing moment, couldn't help but laugh and joke along with the Commander.

"We're going home!" The singer said excitedly as the walked down the dusty desert road they had seen for the first time only a few days ago. "Soon we'll have Jimmy with us again!"

"Yeah, and we can rest." The guitar player appeared to be having a hard time keeping his breath, but there was a smile on his face nevertheless.

The Commander let out a happy sigh. "I can't wait to see the battletram again. I miss my bed..." In his eagerness it took the Commander an extended period of time to realize the other had stopped walking. The singer turned to look at his friend in confusion. "...Bones?"

There was no response.

The Commander forced himself to swallow the lump that had formed in his throat. "Hey...Bones?" The singer took a cautious step forward and closer to his long haired friend. "Are you okay...?"

Again there was no audible response, but unlike the first time this try lead to Eaglebones twitching awkwardly.

"Eaglebones?" The Commander's voice came out unintentionally quiet and squeaky. Eaglebones remained silent, but then slowly turned to face the singer.

"Please no- not this-" The Commander's eyes widened and he actually made a small whimper in fear. He took an instinctive step backwards away from his friend who began to snarl like a wild animal.

"Eaglebones!" The Commander shouted as the one armed infected, who was once the same man he was now calling for, jumped forward to attack him with a grunt.

The two of them fell over, landing on the dirty ground and causing a pile of sandy dust to fly up around them. They struggled together on the side of the road, the Commander keeping a firm grip on Eaglebones' chin with the latter snapping his jaw and trying his hardest to get a taste of the man who he had once called a friend.

"Come on Eaglebones!" The Commander grunted, finally able to move the infected's head a little further away from his skin. "I know you don't want to do this!" He tried to plead. "Snap out of it!" The singer screamed, barely managing to toss the infected off of him.

The Commander reached for his gun, but didn't act quite quick enough as Eaglebones had pounced on him once again.

"God-" The Commander hissed through gritted teeth, shouting as he pushed Eaglebones off of him once more. He looked away and, with a shaky hand, pointed his gun at Eaglebones and pointed the trigger.

Eaglebones slumped to the ground, dead. The Commander began to sob as he fell back to the ground and kicked the dirt like a small child throwing a tantrum.

"I thought-" He was screaming without meaning to, unable to control his voice while in complete agony. "I thought we were going to make it!" The Commander looked up, able to see the battletram in the near distance down the road. He laughed bitterly.

"All my friends are dead!" He was still laughing, but tears streamed down his face in large quantities.

"It's all my fault..." He croaked, the Commander's voice going back to barely being even a whisper. "I couldn't save them...I couldn't save any of them." He snorted. "Some leader I must be."

He laid there on the ground, just sobbing and thinking of all the mistakes he had made during the last few months.

The Commander looked down at the gun in his hand. His breath hitched in his throat, but he cocked the gun anyway.

"I'm sorry Jimmy." He held his breath, still crying pathetically. The Commader's eyes flickered over to Eaglebones before he put the gun up to his own head.


	20. Epilogue

Ever since initially seeing the first report of some problem, Professor Monty Corndog knew something very bad was probably going to inevitably come from it. Though he hadn't expected any of it to become THIS out of control, he had still worked to find a cure as soon as humanely possible. Though at the beginning he had nothing to work from the extra time certainly did help speed up the process.

Unfortunately, it still took him over three months to find the solution he had been working so hard to find. This was obviously bad because by the time he had perfected it, most of the Americas had been void of almost any salvageable life for quite a bit of time. Fortunately it had taken only a little more than two months to fix the main problem. And, while working, to fix the mess, Monty had actually found a pleasant surprise. He handled the discovery with the utmost of care, making sure it was safe the whole trip back to his island home.

Once in the safety of his lab, Monty placed the found object in a chair across from him, smiling gleefully as it actually managed to turn on.

"Android J.I.M.M.Y powering on." A woman's voice came from the robot. Monty's smile only grew larger once Jimmy finished booting up.

"Where am I?" Jimmy asked, looking up at the familiar scientist.

"My home." Monty responded, leaning forward with interest. "Can you tell me what happened?"

Jimmy frowned. "Where are my friends?" The robot asked, completely ignoring the other's question.

"Well, that's what I was hoping to find out." Monty tried to smile soothingly, though it came out looking like some kind of grimace. "Now, can you tell me what happened?" He asked once more.

Jimmy stared hard at the man, silent. Then his gaze flickered to the ground at his feet. "They're...dead." Despite not having real evidence to support that, it still sounded more like a factual statement than a guess.

"I don't think so." Monty said slowly. "At least, not all of them. Down the road from where I found you, I found Eaglebones dead I'm sorry to say." Jimmy looked at the other in silence. Monty continued. "But, there was an empty gas can nearby and tire tracks I'm almost certain belonged to the battletram."

Jimmy's eyes widened in happiness and excitement at the realization he had come to. "The Commander's alive."

Monty grinned. "I believe so."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This epilogue is completely optional to choose as the ending or not. If you prefer to think that this just ISNT A PART OF THE ACTUAL STORY go right ahead! In fact I encourage you to imagine your own ending or whatever else.  
> Either way you do it, I hope you enjoyed this (too long) ridiculous adventure of a zombie thing.  
> And a big thanks to you for sticking around!  
> Other noteable thanks goes to all my friends who said they actually WANTED to read this thing or else I NEVER would have ever even considered uploading it here (or anywhere)  
> and a big thanks to EVERY AQUACADET OUT THERE (Which probably includes you again, look at that two thank yous for you! Nicely done!)  
> Last but not least a thank you to all people who helped contribute to the story, any and all ideas were fantastic even if I didn't put them in the final draft. (A+ to person who helped me edit the prologue as well, thanks)


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